■***  *•  1861  - 1883  •-^** 


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THE  UNIVERSITY  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINA 

LIBRARY 


THE  WILMER  COLLECTION 

OF  CIVIL  WAR  NOVELS 

PRESENTED  BY 

RICHARD  H.  WILMER,  JR. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2009  with  funding  from 

University  of  North  Carolina  at  Chapel  Hill 


http://www.archive.org/details/mysticromancesofOObran 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES 

OF  THE 

BLUE  AND  THE  GKEY 

Masks  of  War,  Commerce  and  Society. 


PICTURES  OF  EEAL  LIFE   SCENES  ENACTED  IN  THIS  AGE,  RARELY 

SURPASSED  IN  THE  WILDEST  DREAMS  OF  FICTITIOUS 

ROMANCE. 


By  ALEXANDER  C.    BRANSCOM, 

Author  of  ''An  Improved  System  of  Self-teachimj  the  English  Language,''''  etc.,  etc. 


Try  not  the  pass,"  the  old  man  said; 
'Dark  lowers  the  tempest  overhead; 
The  roaring  torrent  is  deep  and  wide; 

Beware  the  pine  tree's  withered  branch; 
Beware  the  awful  avalanche." 

— LONGFELLOV/. 


MUTUAL  PUBLISHING  COMPANY, 

45,  47,  49  &  51   Rose  Street, 

NEW    YORK. 


COPYEIGHTED  DECEMBER,  1883,  BY  DAVID  H.  GILDEKSLEEVE. 


Press  of  David  H.  Gildersleeve,  45-51  Rose  St.,  N.  Y. 


PEEFACE. 


"  What  are  the  worst  of  woes  that  wait  on  age? 
What  stamps  the  wrinkle  deepest  on  the  brow? 
To  see  each  loved  one  blotted  from  life's  page, 
Cr  be  alone  on  earth  as  I  am  now?" 

— Bybon. 

The  writer  has  known  nearly  every  vicissitude  in  the  scale  of  fortune,  through  a  long  career, 
in  peculiar  relations  with  the  characters,  or  their  intimate  friends,  portrayed  in  this  volume.  Thus, 
through  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  of  active  and  thrilling  experience  in  daily  life  has  the  foun- 
dation for  every  chapter  been  obtained.  The  mystic  influence  which  the  actions  of  characters 
exercise  on  one  another  are  masterful  and  incomprehensible  lessons  of  life  worthy  the  attention  of 
mankind.  AUTHOR. 

December,  1883. 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Chapter  I.  — Introductory ^ 

Chapter  II.— Garland  Cloud H 

Chapter  III— Adieu  to  Home 13 

Chapter  IV.— Blackburn's  Ford l"* 

Chapter  V.— The  Plains  of  Manassas 17 

Chapter  VI. — Lawrence  Pleasington 20 

Chapter  VII.— The  Contraband  Letters 24 

Chapter  VIII. — Beyond  the  Outposts 27 

Chapter  IX. — The  Picket  Bivouac   37 

Chapter  X. —Silas  Worthington 39 

Chapter  XL— Why  they  did  not  Fight 41 

Chapter  XII. — Co.smopolitan  Aristocracy 45 

Chapter  XIII.  — The  Mountjoys 48 

Chapter  XIV.— Effie  Edelstein ' 49 

Chapter  XV. — Maud  Pleasington •'  •  •  •  50 

Chapter  XVL— Arnold  Noel 50 

Chapter  XVII. — Some  Frequenters  of  Mountjoy  House 51 

Chapter  XVHI. — The  Sensation  at  Mountjoy  Hduse 52 

Chapter  XIX.— The  Mountain  Cabin 60 

Chapter  XX.  —Uncle  Jake  and  the  Fairies 71 

Chapter  XXL— The  Masquerade  Ball  and  Sequence 78 

Chapter  XXH. — The  Plains  of  Manassas  again 81 

Chapter  XXIH.  — The  Angel  of  Consolation 88 

Chapter  XXIV.— The  Field  of  Gettysburg 90 

Chapter  XXV.— Gen.  W.  E.  J 102 

Chapter  XXVL— The  Transfer  and  Part  of  its  Sequel 106 

Chapter  XXVII. —The  Midnight  Meeting 116 

Chapter  XX^TIL- The  Three  Victims  of  Ketaliation , 120 

Chapter  XXIX.— The  Last  Scene  of  the  Tented  Field 123 

Chapter  XXX.— Mountjoy  House  in  the  Storm  Cloud 126 

Chapter  XXXI.— The  Spirits  of  Defiance  and  Menace 135 

Chapter  XXXIL— From  the  Shores  of  the  Dark  Kiver 136 

Chapter  XXXHI.— The  Quadruple  Hymeneal  Consummation 137 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


Chapter  XXXIV.— The  Dark  Conspiracy 139 

Chaptek  XXXV.— The  Blighting  Wave  of  Nameless  Woe 141 

Chapter  XXXVI.— The  Seriously  Mistaken  Identity l-i6 

Chapter  XXXVII.— The  Baneful  Supernatural  and  its  Antidote 148 

Chapter  XXXVIII.— The  Changing  Wind  and  Tide 151 

Chapter  XXXIX. —The  Chamber  of  Death 156 

Chapter  XL. — The  Angels  of  the  Mountain ISii 

Chapter  XLL— The  Angel  and  the  Fiend— Wrestle  with  the  Grim  Messenger 161 

Chapter  XLII.— Confiding  the  Dark  Secret 162 

Chapter  XLIII. — The  Intrigue 165 

Chapter  XLIV.— The  Day  Dream  of  a  Gloomy  Life 168 

Chapter  XLV.— The  Long  Cherished  Eevenge 172 

Chapter  XLVI. — Work-a-day  Sketches  of  Business  Life 173 

Chapter  XL VII.— The  Bitter  Fruit  of  Retribution 175 

Chapter  XL VIII.— Some  Other  Heart  Aches 179 

Chapter  XLVIX.— The  Woes  of  the  Forsaken  Husbands 182 

Chapter  L.  — Josepha  Del  Campano 184 

Chapter  LI.— Three  in  Lieu  of  Four 185 

Chapter  LH. — The  Wounded  and  Forlorn  Dove 186 

Chapter  LIIL— Business  and  Social  Flashes 187 

Chapter  LIV.— The  Lonely  Mysterious  Traveler 189 

Chapter  LV.— Unfolding  the  Mystery 192 

Chapter  LVl.— The  Imprudent  Wooing 197 

Chapter  LVH.— The  Wanderer's  Prize  in  the  Lottery  of  Life         202 

Chapter  LVIII. — A  Railway  Incident 207 

Chapter  LVIX— The  Courtesan's  Revenge 208 

Chapter  LX— In  the  Future  City 210 

Chapter  LXL— The  Mutual  Secret  Inquisitorial  League .' 215 

Chapter  LXQ.— The  Wildly  Fluctuating  Vicissitudes 219 

Chapter  LXIII— Wrecked  on  the  Strand  of  Time 229 

Chapter  LXIV.— More  Evil  Fruit  and  its  Consequences 236 

Chapter  LXV.— The  Wanderer's  Return 238 

Chapter  LXVL— Where  the  Palmetto  Buds  and  the  Magnolia  Blooms 241 

Chapter  LXVIL— Sunshine  and  Shadows 244 

Chapter  LXVIIL— The  Meeting  of  the  Blue  and  the  Grey  under  a  Cloud 250 

Chapter  LXIX— Unmasked 265 

Chapter  LXX.  -The  Noble  Philanthropist 269 

Chapter  LXXI.— Letters  of  Comfort  and  Warning 274 

Chapter  LXXII.— The  Farewell • 280 

Chapter  LXXIII. —Faithful  Hearts  that  not  Forsake 281 

Chapter  LXXI  v.— The  Atonement  Offering 292 

Chapter  LXXV.— The  Dawn  from  a  Long  and  Gloomy  Night 301 

Chapter  LXXVI.— Eighteen  Years  After 303 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES 


BLUE    AND    THE    GEET 


CHAPTER  I. 


INTRODUCTORY. 


"  Down  came  the  storm,  and  smote  amain 
That  vessel  In  her  strength. 
She  shudder'd  and  paused,  like  a  frighten'd  steed  : 
Then  leaped  her  cable's  length.. 

Through  the  midnight  dark  and  drear; 

Through  the  whistling   leet  and  snow. 
Like  a  shrouded  ghost  that  vessel  swept 

Towards  the  reef  of  Norman's  woe. 

*  *  *  * 

She  struck  where  the  white  and  fleecy  waves 

Looked  soft  as  carded  wool ; 
But  the  cruel  rocks,  they  gored  her  sides, 

Like  the  horns  of  an  angry  bull." 

—LONGFELLOW. 

Mystery  veils  many  details  of  our  gigantic  civil 
■war,  the  greatest  conflict,  when  the  issues  at 
stake  are  contemplated,  that  has  ever  convulsed 
a  nation.  Strangely  interesting  vicissitudes 
have  grown  out  of  the  obscure  circumstances  of 
individual  contact,  among  antagonists  who  met 
on  the  outposts  or  beyond ;  on  the  field  of  battle, 
in  the  hospital — minutiae  too  insignificant  for  the 
perceptions  of  the  historian — concealed,  as  they 
were  and  are,  in  the  shadows  of  great  events. 

Writers  of  romance  ransack  the  legendary  lore 
of  the  Old  World,  and  dive  into  the  musty  halls  of 
palaces,  or  the  beaten  tracks  of  court  routine, 
amid  the  regal  shades  of  despotism,  to  locate  their 
plots  and  to  arouse  their  characters  oftener  from 
the  sleep  of  many  centuries  than  to  portray  them 
from  animate  life ;  forgetting  that  the  most  inten- 
sified romances  of  earth  are  to  be  found  in  real 
life  in  this  fast  age  and  country.  The  war  of  the 
American  rebeUion,  and  the  years  following  in  its 


wake,  created  and  have  developed  many  genuine 
heroes  and  heroines  who  have  lived  and  moved 
in  the  mystic  spell  of  fairy  romance,  the  centres 
of  magnetic  attractions  swaying  and  influencing 
numbers  of  other  characters  and  lives  in  masterful 
degree,  yet  all  unknoAvn  to  the  great  and  heed- 
less world,  because  echpsed  by  the  effulgent 
radiance  of  the  leaders  of  legions,  and  corps,  and 
armies,  and  the  sheen  of  beauty  in  the  briUiant 
circles  that  throng  the  gilded  saloons  of  aristo- 
cratic mansions.  With  these  the  historian  has 
acquainted  the  world ;  and  the  exploits  of  some  of 
them  are  too  romantic  for  the  grave  professor  of 
history  to  credit  with  confiding  alacrity.  But 
what  made  them  ideal  heroes  ?  Was  it  alone  all 
but  matchless  talent  and  transcendent  genius? 
Did  these  clothe  Lee  and  Jackson  with  the  insig- 
nia bearing  the  imprint  of  heroism  and  immortal 
renown  ?  No ;  they  were  essential  elements ;  but 
without  the  unyielding  chivalry  and  indomitable, 
self-sacrificing  devotion  of  the  Southern  masses, 
their  bright  names  would  not  shine  in  their  tower- 
ing niches  in  the  temple  of  Fame. 

To  Grant  and  Sherman  the  same  truth  applies. 
What  laid  the  foundation  of  their  successful  tri- 
umphs in  the  South-west,  and  brought  them  from 
obscurity  to  stand  forth  the  pillars  of  hope  to 
support  a  tottering  and  despairing  empire  ?  The 
sturdy  pioneers  of  the  West,  with  their  unerring 
rifles  and  indefatigable  zeal.  These  developed 
commanders  who  inspired  national  confidence 
that  rallied  to  their  support  the  waning  wealth 
of  the  North  and  the  East.  Had  their  early  cam- 
paigns been  prosecuted  with  less  efficient  troops, 


10 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


thej^  would  not  now  be  the  adored  of  the  nation, 
as  the  commanders  who  saved  the  Union. 

Amid  the  rank  and  file  must  the  makers  of 
commanding  and  historical  heroes  be  sought — 
amid  the  rank  and  file  must  the  typical  heroes  of 
life  be  sought.  Here  have  we  looked  for  and 
found  characters  with  strange  features  of  interest 
clustering  about  them,  to  rival  the  war  scenes  of 
the  Arabian  Nights;  the  loves  of  Petrarch  and 
Laura,  in  the  famous  romance  located  in  the  fabled 
vale  of  Vaucluse;  the  story  of  Enoch  Arden's 
long  absence  and  mj^sterious  return ;  the  woes  of 
the  unfortunate  merchant  of  Venice,  had  they  re- 
mained unabated;  the  tragedy  of  Romeo  and 
Juliet ;  the  sleep  of  Rip  Tan  Winkle ;  the  ghosts 
of  Banquo  and  Hamlet;  the  Pandemonium  of 
Milton  and  the  Inferno  of  Dante. 

Although  not  portrayed  with  the  pleasing  col- 
ors of  an  Addison,  the  unique  genius  of  a  Scott, 
nor  yet  with  the  matchless  grace  of  an  Irving, 
our  Ufe  sketches,  if  not  well,  shall  be  truly  de- 
lineated. These  shall  embrace  every  phase  of 
its  shady  and  bright  side  that  pervades  the  middle 
and  upper  ranks  of  American  society.  We  have 
learned  this  through  peculiar  relations  main- 
tained with  the  characters  themselves,  under  sin- 
gular circumstances  arising  from  conditions  in 
Avhich  we  have  been  placed  with  them,  and  which 
we  never  could  have  known  by  other  means.  All 
of  our  leading  characters,  together  with  their 
parts,  even  to  details,  have  been  and  are  inti- 
mately known  to  us,  while  the  parts  of  other 
characters  have  been  supjilied  by  the  parties 
themselves,  or  by  those  who  were  well  acquainted 
with  the  facts. 

We  find  in  them  many  startling  surprises  and 
thrilling  developments  in  the  highest  ranks  of 
both  cosmopolitan  and  rural  aristocracy,  as  well 
as  from  the  middle  marches  of  life ;  in  the  mount- 
ain cabin  and  the  metropolitan  palace ;  the  fierce 
and  fickle  love  of  the  Northern  Lily,  and  the 
wild  and  passionate  devotion  of  the  Southern 
Rose.  How  each  in  turn  was  swayed  by  war's 
tempest,  and  tried  in  the  ordeal  of  that  social 
pestilence  which  followed  in  the  wake  of  blood)'- 
strife,  together  with  soldiers  of  fortune  and  busi- 
ness men  as  portrayed  in  wonderful  careers.  We 
shall  present  a  number  of  characters  just  embark- 


ing, and  continue  to  exhibit  them  as  they  pro- 
gress, either  cautiously  or  recklessly,  on  the 
voyage  of  life,  buffeted  by  the  boisterous,  incon- 
stant waves,  as  they  are  thus  impelled  toward 
the  breakers,  in  the  dangerous  surf,  fringing  the 
margins  of  that  dreary,  desolate  strand  of  the 
rushing,  seething,  destroying  sea  of  Time,  strewn 
far  and  wide  with  numberless  wrecks  of  hope. 

Deign  to  accompany  us  to  the  great  theatre 
where  may  be  witnessed  some  almost  unique 
acts  in  the  drama  of  life — that  prolific  and  inex- 
haustible play  where  develops  all  that  amuses, 
shocks  and  instructs  the  mind  of  mankind.  There 
we  shall  unfold  to  your  view  some  mystic  and 
some  shady  realities  that  are  untold — swiftly 
shifting  and  wildly  varying  scenes.  You  will  see 
actors  and  actresses  without  one  moment  to  re- 
hearse their  parts,  rushed  as  though  it  were  by 
mysterious  and  supernatural  managers  upon  the 
stage,  and  bid  to  play.  We  shall  show  you  acting 
required  of  them,  so  fierce  and  so  precipitate,  as 
the  great  curtain  rolls  up,  disclosing  their  destined 
parts  so  rapidly  that  they  appear  to  be  too  much 
occupied  to  reflect,  or  too  indifferent  to  care,  what 
new  wonder  next  awaits  them. 

Among  our  characters  there  are  some  mask- 
wearers  whose  complications  present  interesting 
and  instructive  features,  which  clearly  demon- 
strate that  the  course  of  life  pursued  by  these 
indiscreet  ones  has  cost  and  is  ever  costing  con- 
fiding, imprudent,  deluded,  unfortunate,  despairing 
men  and  women,  and  those  who  are  near  and 
dear  to  them,  unnumbered  cruel  and  undying 
heart  aches.  The  sequel  will  show,  hoAvever, 
that  most  of  those  who  assume  the  mask  in  the 
commercial  or  in  the  social  world,  do  so  at  first, 
actuated  by  no  unworthy  motive,  but  by  Avhat  they 
at  that  time  regard  as  a  laudable  desire  to  pro- 
tect an  interest  or  a  reputation  from  some  appre- 
hended danger.  But  thus  seeds  of  infection  are 
planted  in  a  fertile  soil  and  matured  by  a  conge- 
nial clime,  where  they  germinate,  rapidly  attain 
dark  luxuriance,  and  soon  mature  their  bitter 
fruits. 

Few,  very  few,  are  securely  exempt  from  lie- 
coming  exposed,  at  some  period  of  hfe,  to  the 
baneful  allurements  of  the  beguiling  mask ;  for 
strange  circumstances,  peculiar  associations,  mys- 


m 

Nrti 


GARLAND  CLOUD. 


11 


terious  influences,  terrible  misfortunes,  in  a  word, 
any  precipitate  revolution  in  the  affairs  and  re- 
lations of  life,  in  the  social  compacts  of  earth, 
may  bring  any  one  face  to  face  with  this  diabol- 
ical generator  of  ruin  and  woe.  By  the  fickle 
capriciousness  of  fortune,  either  gradually,  by 
slow  decay,  or  with  the  precipitation  of  "a 
giant  poAvder  explosion,"  jiossessions  slip  or  are 
wrenched  away  from  the  Avealthy  and  from  the 
independent;  and  unnatural  calamities,  unfore- 
seen and  unavoidable  disasters  overtake  and 
crush  the  prosperous  Avith  a  pitiless,  unsparing 
hand. 

In  and  throughout  these  thrilling  acts,  the  true, 
the  pure  and  the  good  will  intermingle  or  be  in- 
extricably blended  with  the  false,  the  treacherous 
and  the  evil,  as  though  by  some  envious,  even 
malicious,  hand  of  destiny ;  and  these  conflicting 
influences  will  continually  struggle,  each  seeking 
for  the  mastery. 

Out  of  consideration  for  the  relatives  and  the 
friends  of  the  wayward  and  those  of  the  good 
with  whom  the  wayward  were  associated,  we 
shall  disguise  the  true  names  of  characters  and 
the  location  of  two  or  three  scenes;  but  with 
these  exceptions  we  shall  reproduce  realistic 
vicissitudes  through  which  actual  flesh  and  blood 
characters  have  passed.  We  shall  not  draw  on 
the  imagination  except  in  a  few  instances,  when 
we  may  presume  to  bring  the  supernatural  to 
the  surface,  merely  for  the  reason  that  the  pre- 
dominating force  of  such  controlling  influence 
and  presence  is  so  unmistakably  perceptible  as 
clearly  to  demonstrate  that  chance  never  pro- 
duced many  things  which  will  be  portrayed;  that 
like  the  ghost  at  the  banquet,  the  shadowy 
phantom  "will  not  down;"  hence  this  be- 
comes a  mysterious  personality  we  cannot  utterly 
ignore. 

We  promise  to  offer  nothing  unworthy  to 
enter  the  purest  and  the  most  sanctified  pre- 
cincts of  the  home  circle  or  the  church,  as  moral 
lessons  commendable  as  models  to  be  followed 
by  struggling  and  friendless  youth  in  the  lone 
cheerless  battle  of  life,  or  as  warnings  against 
the  dangers  and  snares  ever  lurking  or  concealed 
about  ihe  pathway  of  the  heedless,  prepared  for 
their  destruction ;  to  present  the  sentimental  and 


the  sensational  only  where  they  belong  to  and 
_  are  inseparable  from  true  life-pictures. 

Our  early  scene  will  be  located  under  the  dark 
shadow  of  the  rising  cloud,  in  the  gathering  tem- 
pest of  war,  and  amid  the  shocks  and  the  tumult 
and  the  carnage  of  contending  hosts  on  the  blood 
crimsoned  and  ever  memorable  fields  of  Virginia. 

From  the  war  scenes  we  shall  follow  in  the 
commercial  wake  of  subsequent  years,  often  wan- 
dering amid  the  bubbles  of  the  social  cauldron. 


CHAPTER  II. 


GARLAND   CLOUD. 


"  Alas !  our  yoiing  affections  run  to  waste, 

Or  water  but  the  desert ;  whence  arise 
But  weeds  of  dark  luxuriance,  tares  of  haste; 

Rank  at  the  core,  though  tempting  to  the  eye. 

Flowers  whose  wild  odors  breathe  but  agonies; 
And  trees  whose  gums  are  poison ;  such  the  plants. 

Which  spring  beneath  her  steps,  as  Passion  flies 
O'er  the  world's  wilderness,  and  vainly  pants 
For  some  celestial  fruit  forbidden  to  our  wants." 

—Byron. 

What  starthng  memories  run  back  to  cluster 
about  the  May-day  of  1861.  Prattling  children 
of  that  historical  time  have  its  memor}^  seared  into 
the  tablets  of  their  hearts.  May-Queens  who 
were  not  crowned  recall  that  cruel  day  of  dis- 
appointment with  rankling  bitterness ;  and  it  is 
associated  with  shadows  of  sadness  that  older 
people  do  not  forget. 

Admirers  of  Nature  in  perfect  loveliness  may 
find  their  imaged  beauty  enshrined  in  a  thousand 
spots — as  fairy  enchantresses — in  the  blue-grass 
region  of  South-western  Virginia,  so  calmly  se- 
rene as  to  impress  one  with  the  idea  that  agita- 
tion, tumult,  passion  and  sorrow  never  invade 
these  sequestered  haunts  of  tranquil  blissfulness. 
Amid  the  blue  hills,  the  rippling  rills,  and  the 
crystal  streams  of  this  picturesque  country,  and 
high  up  among  surrounding  mountain-peaks  to 
the  East  and  West — to  the  North  the  lovely  blue- 
grass  country  rolling  away  in  undulating  waves 
far  beyond  the  vision  of  the  eye,  and  South  the 
pine  forests,  the  fields  and  the  villages  of  North 
Carolina  spreading  out  before  the  wondering  gaze 
until  the  horizon  veils  the  vieV — lays  a  broad, 
level  tract  of  glade  land  known  for  many  miles 


12 


MYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


rfround  as  "  the  mountain  meadows,"  one  of  its 
margins  resting  on  the  very  summit  of  the  ab- 
ruptly precipitous  steeps  of  the  Blue-Ridge 
Mountain.  On  this  vast  tract  stands  a  desolate 
homestead,  the  reputed  scene  of  a  horrible  trag- 
edy, where  it  was  believed  the  owner  murdered  a 
traveler  for  his  money :  hence  the  house  was  said 
to  be  haunted.  Many  people  in  the  neighbor- 
liood  gave  it  a  wide  berth  in  daylight,  and  few  of 
the  most  daring  hunters  would  have  visited  it  at 
night;  no  one  could  be  induced  to  live  in  the 
"haunted  house."  Thus  it  was  in  May,  1861;  it 
is  much  the  same  in  May,  1883. 

It  is  a  May-day  scene  in  1861  which  we  are  to 
present  on  this  stage — a  scene  not  much  out  of 
harmony  with  the  ghostly  legends  of  the  spot; 
a  scene  such  as  never  had  been  witnessed  before 
in  this  peaceful  region,  and  such  as  the  advancing 
centuries  may  not  unfold  again. 

Usually,  the  traveler  journeying  along  the 
highway  that  lies  in  a  lane  through  this  tract, 
would  not  see  a  human  being  anywhere  within 
the  bounds  of  the  vast  meadows.  But  how 
changed  was  the  aspect  of  the  spot  on  that  brjjjht 
May  morning,  when  charming  Nature  smiled  on 
those  desolate  fields!  Could  some  one  of  the 
numerous  octogenarians  of  that  vitahzing  clime 
and  neighborhood,  utterly  ignorant  of  the  mad- 
dening agitations  of  the  day,  have  looked  upon 
the  meadows  in  the  yet  early  morning  of 
that  day,  he  would  have  been  struck  dumb  Avith 
amazement. 

The  sun  rose  bright  and  gloriously ;  not  a  cloud 
spot  or  mist  of  haze  obscured  the  cerulean  dome 
of  the  smiHng  horizon.  Young  Nature,  but  lately 
freed  from  the  icy  chains  of  winter,  bounded 
with  exuberant  gratitude,  and  danced  in  raptur- 
ous ecstasy  before  the  King  of  Day  on  his  Orien- 
tal throne  of  transcendent  brilliancy  and  match- 
less splendor.  Sun-rise,  on  a  morning  such  as  we 
have  just  described,  in  those  vast  mountain  soli- 
tudes, impresses  the  stranger  who  first  beholds 
it  Avith  a  thrill  of  emotion,  and  awakens  in  his 
being  a  sense  of  reverential  admiration  ever  to  be 
remembered.  Already  flowers  were  blushing  in 
the  dells  and  on  the  hill-sides,  and  exhaling  their 
sweet  perfumes.  Budding  Nature  beamed  on 
every  twig.     The  gentle  zephyrs  were  redolent 


with  her  fragrance,  and  replete  with  the  dul- 
cet notes  of  the  warbling  songsters  of  the  for- 
est. What  a  fearful  contrast  of  sombre  gloom 
was  shed  upon  this  peaceful  scene  from  that  dark 
political  cloud  looming  up  the  northern  sky; 
smoke  from  the  wasting  fires  kindling  by  wicked 
jnan. 

The  dew  was  not  yet  dry  on  the  tender  grass 
and  young  leaves,  when  scores  of  people  were  on 
the  meadows,  and  every  road  or  pathway,  for 
miles  and  miles  in  all  directions,  was  thronged 
with  men,  women  and  children,  all  eagerly  has- 
tening toward  the  meadows,  clearly  indicating 
that  intense  excitement  was  raging  at  fever  heat 
among  the  children  of  the  mountain.  Before  ten 
o'clock  thousands  of  people  were  on  the  ground, 
and  yet  they  came.  Never  before,  not  within 
twenty-five  miles  of  this  spot,  had  there  been 
one-fourth  as  many  people  collected  together. 
But  noAV,  something  extraordinary  was  on  hand. 

It  was  expected  that  at  this  place  and  on  this 
day,  the  second  company  of  volunteers  called  for 
in  the  county  would  be  enlisted  and  organized. 
Speeches  were  made,  urging  all  who  wished  to 
share  in  the  honors  and  the  glories  of  the  war  to 
embrace  this,  the  last  opportunity,  as  peace  Avould 
be  made  before  another  company  would  be  or- 
ganized in  the  county.  Old  men — veterans  of  the 
Avar  of  1812-14 — hung  their  heads  and  assumed 
an  air  of  gravity ,  Avomen  Avept. 

Just  as  the  music  Avas  ready  to  start  as  the 
signal  for  A^olunteers  to  fall  in  line,  all  eyes  were 
turned  in  the  direction  of  a  solitary  traveler,  com- 
ing from  the  north,  on  the  Court-house  road.  He 
Avas  young,  tall,  rather  prepossessing,  and  clad 
in  the  uniform  of  a  volunteer,  the  only  one  Avho 
Avould  be  there,  the  first  upon  whom  the  eyes  of 
nine-tenths  of  that  assembly  had  ever  rested. 

Farmer  Moore  was  the  only  man  on  the  speak- 
er's stand  able  to  recognize  the  young  man. 

"  There  is  coming  yonder,"  said  he,  "  young 
Cloud,  one  of  the  Guards.  We  shall  noAv  get  the 
news  from  H ." 

"  Let  us  have  the  music  delayed  until  we  learn 
Avhat  news  he  brings,  and,  in  the  meantime,  tell 
us  Avho  this  young  man  is,  friend  Moore,"  Avas  the 
rejoinder  of  Judge  Carter. 

"  He  is  "  said  Mr.  Moore,  "  a  son  of  the  mount- 


ADIEU  TO   HOME. 


13 


ain.  Yonder  stand  his  grand-parents,  parents, 
sisters  and  other  relatives,  under  the  cedar-tree,  ad- 
miring him ;  and  well  they  may  admire  him,  for 
he  is  a  young  man  of  whom  any  family  might 
justly  be  proud.  The  family  belongs  to  the  mid- 
dle class,  and  has  since  Yorktown  was  first  col- 
onized; they  are  all  respectable,  sober  and  honest 
people,  with  no  stain  on  the  family  name.  Four 
years  since,  when  the  lad  was  only  thirteen  years 
old,  he  had  committed  to  memory  all  the  meagre 
studies  taught  in  our  schools.  Because  no  others 
are  introduced,  he  never  goes  to  school,  and  his 
father  would  not  send  him  to  a  higher  school.  He 
is  rather  awkward,  taciturn,  and  extremely  back- 
ward and  bashful  in  the  company  of  ladies.  He 
is  the  best  shot  with  a  rifle  in  the  county,  and 
nothing  excites  him.  He  was  the  first  volunteer 
in  the  county.  But  he  will  pass  us.  I  must  hail 
him.     Say,  Cloud,  what  is  the  news  ?  " 

Cloud:  "Not  a  word,  Mr.  Moore,  except  that 
the  G-uards  have  received  marching  orders,  and 

will  leave  H to-morrow  morning  at  ten  o'clock 

for  the  tented  field." 

Then  this  object  that  attracted  so  many  admir- 
ing eyes,  hastened  to  join  his  family  group,  where 
he  was  quickly  surrounded  by  friends  and  stran- 
gers. Old  and  young  ladies  of  the  first  families 
in  the  land,  regardless  of  etiquette  or  ceremony, 
eagerly  vied  with  one  another  to  grasp  his  hand 
and  bid  him  God's  blessing.  But  his  own  family 
— mother  and  sisters — greeted  him  with  quivering 
lips  and  moistening  eyes. 

The  musicians  also  came  up  and  stood  by 
young  Cloud.  But  soon  they  received  the  signal 
from  the  speaker's  stand  to  proceed.  At  once 
the  shrill,  stirring  notes  of  the  fife,  and  the  tu- 
multuous roll  of  the  drum,  were  echoing  and 
reverberating  from  the  craggy  mountain-spurs, 
down  among  deep  and  cavernous  ravines,  and 
floating  away  on  the  mild  and  balmy  breeze, 
laden  with  odoriferous  perfu^me  from  the  dog- 
wood, the  laurel  and  the  honeysuckle. 

The  father  of  young  Cloud  and  his  mother's 
brother  were  the  first  men  in  line  behind  the 
music.  In  five  minutes  double  the  number  wanted 
were  in  line ;  and  they  had  to  be  rejected  by  lot. 

The  uncle  was  elected  captain,  the  father  first- 
lieutenant  by  acclamation;   then  young  Cloud's 


name  was  mentioned  in  connection  with  the  next 
nomination. 

Promptly  this  young  man,  manifesting  pain- 
ful embarrassment,  stepped  in  front  of  the  line 
and  said  : 

"  Schoolmates,  companions,  neighbors  and 
friends,  I  entreat  you  not  to  nominate  me  for  any 
office.  I  could  not  accept,  because  I  do  not  merit 
such  a  gift.  I  thank  you,  my  friends,  those  of  you 
who  called  my  name ;  but  think  no  more  about  it. 
My  position  has  been  chosen.  -I  shall  die  in  the 
ranks,  or  rise  from  them,  should  I  ever  rise,  on  the 
scale  of  merit.  To-morrow  I  depart  for  the  front. 
To-morrow  morning  there  will  be  more  than  one 
hundred  sad  families  in  this  county.  Ten  days 
hence  the  number  will  double;  there  will  be 
I  vacant  places  at  the  table;  empty  chairs  in  the 
home  circle;  some  of  them — G-od  only  knows 
how  many — forever.  Do  not  grieve  that  lot  has 
rejected  many  of  you.  It  is  but  for  a  few  days. 
Many  may  get  an  opportunity  to  hear  their 
names  called  from  the  muster-roll  who  are  not 
anxious  to  have  that  distmction  before  the  end 
comes.  Our  enemies  have  the  flag  and  the  con- 
stitution of  our  forefathers.  Would  to  G-od  that 
we  had  them.  There  is  a  magic  in  their  name 
that  will  be  a  greater  power  against  us  than  half 
the  legions  of  the  North.  You  have  a  hundred 
M^orthier  than  I  from  whom  to  select.  Please 
jDroceed  with  your  organization." 


CHAPTER   III. 

ADIECr  TO  HOME. 
"Perchance  my  dog  will  whine  in  vain, 
'Till  fed  by  stranger  hands; 
But,  long  ere  I  come  back  again, 
He'd  tear  me  where  he  stands." 

— Byrcn. 

Thousands  remember  to  this  day,  in  mournful 
despair,  the  agonizing  anguish  of  those  sad  days  of 
farewells,  when  fair  cheeks  were  wet  with  tears ; 
rosy  lips  kissed  for  the  last  time ;  receding  forms 
watched  by  eyes  —  tear-dimmed  eyes  —  gazing 
with  longing  fondness  after  loved  ones  until 
these  disappeared  round  the  street  corners,  the 
turn  of  the  road,  or  over  the  brow  of  a  hill,  to  re- 
turn— nevermore.  Oh,  alas !  for  the  broken  hearts 
these  partings  have  since  wrung. 


14 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


Seated  in  the  home-circle  with  the  family,  the 
grandfather  and  some  other  friends,  on  the  same 
evening  after  the  Mountain  Meadow  scene,  the 
grandfather  was  the  first  to  address  young  Cloud 
with  reference  to  the  momentous  questions  of  the 
day. 

"  Garland,"  he  said  thoughtfully,  and  with  mani- 
fest reluctance,  "  you  do  not  know  how  it  pained 
me  to  see  you  so  abrupt  with  those  gentlemen  as 
we  were  leaving  the  Meadows  this  evening." 

"  I  could  not  help  it,  grandfather.  I  hate  them 
with  all  the  intensity  of  my  passionate  young 
nature,  and  I  could  not  dissemble." 

"  Why,  Garland  Cloud !  you  amaze  me,  boy ;  but 
for  the  uniform  you  wear,  I  could  scarcely  refrain 
from  striking  you.  Foolish  boy !  They  have  been 
Assemblymen,  Congressmen,  Senators,  and  are 
likely  to  be  generals ;  probably  over  you ;  they 
might  then  remember  this  occurrence." 

"  Hum !  Those  politicians  ?  You  are  as  likely 
to  wake  a  young  man  to-morrow  morning,  my 
grandfather,  aa  you  are  ever  to  see  one  of  those 
oily-tongued  public  distracters  in  a  soldier's  uni- 
form. They  have  made  the  war,  and  are  little,  if 
any,  better  than  John  Brown  was.  Was  the  same 
fate  meted  out  to  some  thousands  of  them,  both 
North  and  South,  to-morrow,  that  would  put  an 
end  to  all  thia  disturbance  for  the  next  hundred 
years,  and  save  the  country  ten  times  as  many  and 
by  far  more  valuable  lives,  besides  all  the  other 
undreamed-of  desolation  and  miseries  which  war 
must  bring.  Why  don't  they  prove  their  profes- 
sions? Why  have  they  not  stepped  first,  some- 
where, to  the  notes  of  the  music,  as  they  saw  my 
father  and  uncle,  their  dupes,  step  to-day  ?  Where 
does  the  country  need  them  ?  Is  it  to  go  from 
place  to  place  exclaiming — '  Go  on,  boys ;  we  will 
meet  you  there,'  when  ere  many  days  or  weeks 
the  thunder  o£  cannon  and  the  smoke  of  burning 
homesteads,  aa  it  ascends  heavenward,  will  make 
this  appeal  more  eloquently  and  more  forcibly 
than  any  words  these  demagogues  can  utter,  as 
those  tocsins  and  emblems  of  danger  and  desola- 
tion are  wafted  Southward  from  the  banks  of  the 
Potomac  ?  Let  them  do  their  duty,  grandfather, 
and  I  will  respect  and  honor  them ;  but  until  then 
I  cannot." 

The  grandfather  sat  mutely  gazing  at  the  rosy 


face  of  this  youth,  now  in  an  unusual  glow  from 
the  ardor  of  his  earnest  zeal  in  the  subject  upon 
which  he  had  been  speaking. 

The  early  breakfast  was  eaten  amid  the  silence 
that  pervades  the  mourning  group  pending  the 
solemn  services  of  a  funeral— Jiearts  were  full  to 
overflowing. 

The  farewells  were  the  silent  pressure  of  hands, 
the  mute  sealing  and  severing  of  lips.  Thus  quit- 
ting the  threshold  of  his  mountain  home,  young 
Cloud  was  met  by  his  two  little  hounds,  the  com- 
panions of  his  youthful  sports.  In  a  choking 
voice  he  said,  "  Stay  here,  my  good  boys."  The 
Httle  brutes,  seated  on  the  ground,  looking  wist^ 
fully  through  the  yet  grey  twilight  after  his  re- 
ceding form,  raised  a  mournful  howl — something 
they  had  never  done  before — which  was  regarded 
as  ominous  of  evil  to  come.  Garland  Cloud  was 
gone  on  his  tidal  wave  of  time,  out  into  the 
tumult,  the  storms  and  the  darkness  of  the  mad 
and  thundering  sea  of  life,  and  into  the  valley  and 
shadows  of  death. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

Blackburn's    ford. 

'  •  But  hark !  that  deep  sound  breaks  in  once  more— 
To  arms !  to  arms !  it  is,it  is  the  cannon's  opening  roar." 

— Bykon. 
In  Prince  William  County,  Virginia,  there  is, 
and  was  at  the  time  of  which  we  write,  a  railway 
junction  on  the  Orange  and  Alexandria  E.  R. 
known  on  the  maps  as  Manassas  Junction.  This 
now  is  known  in  history  as  a  tragic  stage,  atniU- 
tary  depot,  a  strategic  point,  associated  with  the 
manoeuvring  of  grand  armies  and  sanguinary  bat- 
tle-fields. Here  the  Confederate  forces  selected 
their  early  rendezvous  from  which  to  watch  and 
guard  the  approaches  leading  to  Washington, 
where  it  was  known  the  Government  of  the  Union 
was  collecting  an  army  to  invade  Virginia.  Be- 
tween this  spot  and  Washington  a  narrow,-slug- 
gish,  but  crooked  and  deep  stream  slowly  mean- 
ders along  the  base  o£  steep  and  almost  perpen- 
dicular hill-sides  and  precipices,  and  through 
swamps  covered  with  dense  forests,  with  only 
occasional  places  that  are  f  ordable ;  and  few  ap- 
proaches available  lor  armies  to  move  to  other 


BLACKBUEN'S  FORD. 


15 


points  where  bridges  might  be  thrown  across ;  or, 
such  is  true  of  the  topography  of  the  stream  and 
its  banlcs  from  Stone  Bridge  on  down  toward  the 
Potomac  below,  where  it  would  be  desirable  for 
an  army  to  cross  in  an  advance  on  Manassas 
Junction.  Above  ^tone  Bridge  a  skillful  general 
would  not  attempt  to  make  the  detour  necessary 
to  reach  the  crossings  and  return  to  the  objective 
point,  as  such  a  move  would  expose  his  column  to 
direct  attacks,  on  the  march,  and  his  baggage  and 
communication  to  seizure  by  the  enemy  in  the 
vicinity  of  Centreville,  near  which  point  the  Con- 
federates were  posted,  guarding  the  fords  of  this 
stream,  known  as  Bull  Run.  The  most  critical 
points  were  from  four  to  eight  miles  from  the 
junction.  One  of  these  heads  this  chapter  — 
Blackburn's  Ford. 

The  night  of  the  16th  and  the  morning  of  the 
17th  of  July,  1861,  contained  moments  of  intense 
excitement  for  the  Confederate  army  of,  observa- 
tion, then  for  the  first  time  drawn  up  in  line  of 
battle,  face  to  face  with  the  grim  reahties  of  war 
— the  marshaled  hosts  of  the  enemy ;  the  antag- 
onists were  hovering  near  the  margins  of  Bull  Run, 
which  flowed  between  them.  The  few  fords  and 
the  railroad  bridge  were  alertly  guarded  by  the 
Confederates,  some  bodies  of  whom  were  in  mo- 
tion so  constantly  as  to  catch  not  even  broken 
moments  of  sleep  on  the  night  of  the  16th.    , 

Col.  E 's  brigade  of  Virginians,  one  such  a 

body  of  vigilant  troops,  was  constantly  in  motion 
or  underarms  until  nine  o'clock  a.  m.  on  the  17th, 
when  arms  were  stacked  in  the  piney  slirubs  with 
a  corn-field  in  front,  about  five  hundred  yards 
in  rear  of  Blackburn's  Ford,  then  held  by  Gen. 
Longstreet. 

But  a  few  moments  elapsed  before  the  men 
were  generally  asleep.  One  private  sat  bolt 
upright  with  no  symptoms  of  sleep  in  his  restless 
blue  eyes.  This  individual  was  watching  clouds  of 
dust  rising  up  on  a  high  plateau  across  the  corn- 
field, and  about  one  mile  distant.  He  did  not 
know  how  far  it  was  to  Bull  Run,  and  was  unable 
to  tell  whether  friends  or  foes  were  raising  the 
dust;  yet,  at  all  events,  natural  instinct  enabled 
his  untutored  mind  to  determine  that  it  was  no 
small  scouting  party,  be  it  which  side  it  might ; 
and  he  watched  it  with  deep  interest. 


This  unsophisticated  person  was  Garland  Cloud 
— the  child  and  boy-soldier  of  the  mountain, 
wrenched  away  from  his  home  of  purity  and  the 
innocent  joys  of  his  tender  years,  objects  and 
scenes  he  loved  so  well,  and  launched  out  on  that 
rising  sea  of  fire  and  blood  to  be  all  but  a  lone 
and  friendless  wanderer. 

The  family  of  every  other  member  of  his 
company  was  regarded  as  being  above  his  in  the 
social  scale.  Because  of  this  he  had  often  felt 
that  he  was  slighted.  Some  of  the  ranker  mem- 
bers of  the  blue-blooded  aristocracy  had  attempted 
to  make  him  the  drudge  of  the  company,  while 
others  had  tried  to  humiliate  him  by  offering  to 
hire  him  to  do  little  acts  of  menial  service,  all  of 
which  he  treated  with  dignified  and  becoming 
contempt.  For  these  reasons  between  him  and 
his  comrades  there  was  Uttle  sympathy  and  no  in- 
timate companionship.  Off  duty  he  was  rather 
morose  and  retiring. 

Seated  as  we  have  described  him,  his  thoughts 
were  rambling ;  they  wandered  back  home ;  then 
back  into  history, — to  the  bridge  of  Lodi ;  to  Aus- 
terlitz ;  to  Waterloo ;  across  to  the  rising  clouds  of 
dust ;  then  to  his  sleeping  companions.  He  con- 
cluded that  their  advantages  of  birth  and  social 
position  would  avail  them  nothing  in  the  great 
lottery  of  life  and  death  in  which  they  were  about 
to  be  played ;  that  they  could  not  endure  hard- 
ships and  exposure  with  him ;  that  many  of  them 
had  already  been  in  trouble  for  infraction  of  disci- 
pline ;  and  that  upon  the  whole  they  were  more 
truly  objects  of  pity  than  himself. 

Suddenly  amid  the  clouds  of  dust  his  eye  caught 
a  whiff  of  smoke ;  in  an  instant  a  bomb-shell  came 
crashing  into  the  corn-field ;  in  less  than  another 
minute  one  came  tearing  through  the  pine  saplings. 
The  first  one  had  startled  several  sleepers ;  the  last 

one  aroused  Col.  E and  the  entire  brigade  to 

a  man. 

Col.  E was  a  veteran  of  the  Mexican  and 

Indian  wars,  and  as  profane  as  his  Satanic  maj- 
esty could  wish. 

He  was  a  member  of  the  Virginia  Convention, 
where  his  extraordinary  powers  of  forensic  elo- 
quence were  employed  in  opposition  to  secession, 
in  course  of  which  he  demonstrated,  in  terms 
that  could  not  be   gainsaid,  and  were  virtually 


16 


MYSTIC  KOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


unanswerable,  liow  futile  were  the  hopes  that 
there  were  any  chances  for  the  Southern  Confed- 
eration to  succeed ;  and  portrayed  the  picture  of 
devastation  and  ruin  whicli  would  inevitably  en- 
tail on  the  Old  Dominion,  his  beloved  and  native 
land,  in  colors  of  fire,  blood,  desolation,  poverty 
and  mourning,  which  made  the  fiery  blood  of 
those  intoxicating  times  run  cold  and  curdling  in 
its  feverish  veins.  To  the  last  and  final  ballot  he 
A'oted  against  the  act  of  secession,  asserting  that 
the  blood  and  tears  of  his  country  should  not  be 
on  his  head.  The  act  of  secession  having  sealed 
his  prophetic  doom  of  Virginia,  as  one  of  her  true, 
chivalrous,  obedient  sons,  he  meekly  bowed  his 
head  to  the  decree  which  he  had  in  vain  so  val- 
iantly battled  to  defeat ;  and  without  a  moment 
of  hesitation  or  delay,  buckled  on  his  sword  with 
a  soldier's  experienced  hand,  and  hastened  to 
where  the  infernal  machines  of  war  would  first 
hurl  and  explode  their  missiles  of  death. 

The  curtain  had  been  rolled  up  while  he  slept; 
he  awoke  to  find  the  bloody  scene  before  his  open 
eyes,  merging  forth  upon  the  stage. 

On  lying  down  to  sleep  he  had  unbuckled 
his  sword  and  jDlaced  it  by  his  side,  where  the 
pine  leaves  covered  it  up.  Garland  Cloud  was 
not  ten  feet  from  his  veteran  commander,  who 
was  both  his  colonel  and  brigade  commander 
pro  tern.  The  young  tyro  at  this  moment  was 
intently  watching  and  noting  the  coolness  and 
apparent  unconcern  of  the  old  soldier  while 
searching  for  his  blade,  but  was  much  shocked 
when  the  old  officer  turned  to  his  adjutant  and 
said : 

"  Capt.  Gr ,  where  in  h —  is  my  sword?  " 

Very  soon  the  four  regiments  were  under  arms. 
Col.  E in  front  of  the  centre,  gave  the  com- 
mand :  "  Load  at  will,  load !  "  Instantaneously  the 
commanders  of  regiments  repeated  this  order,  and 
it  was  in  turn  as  quickly  reiterated  by  the  com- 
manders of  forty  companies. 

Capt,  H was  a  West-Pointer  of  high  hon- 
ors, but  was,  for  the  first  time,  under  fire.     He 

was  Col.  E 's  townsman,  and  belonged  to  his 

regiment.  Facing  his  company  with  a  graceful 
precision  that  no  one  but  a  trained  soldier  could 
imitate,  yet  so  far  influenced  by  the  prevalent  ex- 
citement as  to  forget  the  order  he  had  just  re- 


ceived, in  a  clear,  stentorian  voice,  he  gave  the 
command : 

"  Company ,  load  in  nine  times,  loadl" 

Col.  E was  a  considerable  distance  from 

this  officer,  but  his  experienced  ear  caught  this 
bungling  blunder  from  amoj.ig  the  forty  voices 
with  which  it  mingled,  and  standing  straight  in 
his  stirrups,  he  exclaimed  at  the  top  of  his  voice : 

"Capt.  H ,  load  in  h — fire  andd — nation; 

load  as  quick  as  you  can,  and  shoot  the  same 
way." 

By  this  time  the  clear,  sharp  report  of  now 
and  then  an  out-post  rifle  was  heard.  This  grad- 
ually increased  to  the  desultory  rattle  of  the 
skirmish  lines.  A  temporary,  but  to  those  whom 
experience  had  taught  its  import,  ominous  Bilence 
followed ;  Longstreet's  skirmishers  had  retired  to 
their  i-egiments.  This  suspense  was  soon  broken 
by  a  volley  of  musketry,  followed  in  rapid  suc- 
cession by  another  and  another,  until,  in  a  few 
moments,  the  firing  deepened  into  one  steady 
continuous  roll. 

The  peculiar  sensations  which  thrill  the  being, 
and  the  unique  impression  made  upon  the 
mind  of  the  uninitiated,  the  first  time  one 
hears  the  incessant,  unbroken  roll  of  musketry, 
in  actual,  hostile  combat,  has  never  yet  been 
described  by  words.  No  language  in  this  -world, 
no  combination  of  words  ever  constructed  bj' 
man,  has  in  any  degree,  even  approximately  ap- 
proached towards  doing  the  subject  justice.  To 
be  understood  fully,  and  to  be  appreciated  duly, 
these  emotions  and  impressions  must  be  exj^e- 
rienced ;  and  those  only  who  have  thus  learned 
them  can  imagine  what  they  are  like,  because 
there  is  nothing  to  present  es  a  parallel  illustra- 
tion with  which  the  reality  might  Ije  contrasted. 
Hence  it  is  needless  to  attempt  e,  description,  for 
no  matter  howsoever  earnestly  and  intelligently 
the  effort  might  be  made,  the  result  Avould  inevi- 
tably be  a  miserable  failure. 

Quickly   Col.   E 's  command  crossed    the 

corn-field.  In  a  narrow  skirt  of  pines  beyond, 
it  began  to  meet  Longstreet's  wounded;  some 
were  walking,  some  were  borne  on  fitters,  while 
others  were  in  ambulances.  There  was  both  the 
dripping  and  streaming  life-blood  of  mortal  man 
visibly  and  unquestionably  ebbing  out. 


THE  PLAINS  OF  MANASSAS. 


17 


Emerging  from  the  pines,  the  advancing  col- 
umn came  into  an  open  field  extending,  with  con- 
siderable down  grade,  to  the  banks  of  Bull  Run. 
in  full  view  of  the  Federal  batteries  posted  on  the 
opposite  heights,  and  exposed  to  their  fire. 

A  double-quick-sf  ep  movement  promptly  placed 

Col.  E 's  column  in  position  on   the  left  of 

Longstreet's  hotly  engaged  line,  just  as  the  Fed- 
eral infantry  was  finally  repulsed. 

For  some  hours,  a  spirited  artillery  duel  was 
maintained,  but  the  sun  went  down  on  a  scene  of 
apparently  perfect  tranquillity.  Col.  E 's  com- 
mand remained  in  line  of  battle  on  the  bank  of 
the  stream. 

When  it  was  quite  dark,  the  immediate  com- 
rades of  G-arland  Cloud  observed  him  Avith  his 
bayonet  in  hand,  actively  gouging  into  the  ground. 

"  What  are  you  doing,  Cloud?"  came  from  sev- 
eral mouths. 

"  Preparing  to  build  breastworks.  We  have 
no  picks  nor  spades,  yet  we  can,  however,  loosen 
earth  with  the  bayonet  and  throw  it  up  with  the 
hands,  so  as  to  make  some  protection  long  before 
day,  which  we  are  likely  to  need  to-morrow," 
was  the  reply. 

In  less  than  twenty  minutes  every  man  in  the 
brigade  was  at  work  like  a  beaver.  Before  mid- 
night a  line  of  earth  had  thus  risen  to  defy  mus- 
ket-balls or  grape-shot.  Behind  this  improvised 
protection  the  brigade  remained  exposed  to  the 
liurning  sun  of  July  by  day,  and  the  chilling  dews 
of  this  flat  and  boggy  locality  by  night,  until  the 
afternoon  of  the  20th  of  July,  as  quietly  as  if 
participating  in  some  solemn  or  sacred  ceremony  ; 
then  it  Avas  relieved,  and  retired  to  the  rear  for  a 
night  of  much-needed  repose. 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE      PLAINS      OF      MANASSAS. 

"  Cannon  to  right  of  them  ; 

-   Cannon  to  left  of  them ; 
Cannon  in  front  of  them. 
Volleyed  and  thundered." 

— Tknnyson. 

Pure,  consecrated  and  holy  day,  ordained  for 
piety  and  devotion ;  as  bright,  as  lovely,  and  as 
glorious  in   its  transcendent  brilliancy  and  per- 
fect endoAvments   of  Nature,  as  any  that  ever 
2 


burst  forth  from  the  Oriental  realms  of  morning 
upon  a  strife-rent  and  sin-stricken  Avorld,  since 
the  first  dawned  in  its  rare  and  radiant  beauty 
upon  innocent,  semi-Heavenly  Paradise!  Such 
was  that  Sabbath  morning  of  July  21st,  1861,  as 
it  broke  upon  sweet,  serenely  sleeping  creation,  in 
the  beautiful  and  yet  tranquil  i)lains  of  Manassas. 

All  Nature  Avas  perfect  in  her  appointments ; 
the  trees  and  the  fields  were  adorned  Avith  the 
most  gorgeous  apparel  fi-om  the  brightest  textures 
of  summer  splendor.  The  canopy  of  Heaven  Avas 
clear,  without  a  cloud  or  haze  spot  anyAvhere 
visible.  Not  a  breath  of  air  stirred  the  most  del- 
icate leaf.  Scattered  far  and  wide,  Avas  to  be 
seen  here  and  there  the  smoke  from  homesteads 
of  the  early-rising  tillers  of  the  soil,  or  those 
AA'hom  the  stirring  events, — anticipated  in  their 
midst,  but  yet  held  in  appalling  suspense — had 
caused  to  o^uit  restless  beds  earher  than  their 
Avonted  Sabbath  morning  hours.  In  tAvo  paiticu- 
lar  localities,  smoke  rose  high  up  as  from  tAvo  huge 
cities;  spread  out  and  hung  like  a  pall  suspended 
in  the  elements,  as  sloAvly  gathering,  sluggishly 
moving,  yet  blackly  portentous  clouds — threat- 
ening harbingers  of  a  coming  storm. 

Far  away  in  the  back-ground,  rose  up  in  bold 
relief,  the  huge,  dimly-defined  outlines  of  the 
Alleghany  Mountains,  yet  partially  obscured  by 
streaks  of  grey  tAvilight.  Back  in  the  rear  the 
shrill  scream  of  the  locomotives  occasionally  rang 
through  the  still  dcAvy  air.  Besides  this,  "  the 
cock's  shrill  clarion "  Avas  the  only  sound  to  be 
heard. 

The  sun  rose  bright  and  gloAving,  his  first  rays 
transforming  the  myriad  dew-drops  to  silver  and 
pearl ;  for  all  things  Avere 

"  Dewy  Avith  Nature's  tear-drops, 
Weeping,  if  aught  inanimate  ever  weeps, 
For  the  unreturning  brave." 

The  Confederate  camps  were  quiet.  The  early 
repast  was  over.  Conversation,  whenever  any 
occurred,  was  carried  on  in  subdued  tones.  Oc- 
casionally a  man  could  be  seen  with  the  head 
boAved  in  mute  but  meditative  prayer ;  another 
reading  the  Bible.  But  the  heart — ah,  Avhere  Avas 
the  heart  ?  Far  aAvay  on  the  Sabbath  of  other 
days,  amid'scenes  the  moistening  eye  of  the  pen- 
sive one,  yet  kept  bright  by  the  labored  pulsa- 


18 


MYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


tions  of  that  wildly  throbbing  heart,  might  be- 
hold never  more. 

And  those  away  there,  among  those  distant 
scenes  of  yore,  what  of  them  ?  From  Plymouth 
Rock  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico;  from  the  base  of 
the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the  Atlantic,  oh  merci- 
ful God !  what  a  day  of  agonizing  suspense  and 
bitter  anguish  of  mind  and  or  soul  this  was  des- 
tined to  be  for  thousands  and  thousands  of  fam- 
ilies all  over  this  broad  and  distracted  land ! 

Such  was  the  situation,  and  such  was  the  scen- 
ery which  surrounded  and  decorated  the  stage 
of  this  Sabbath  day's  theatre,  when  Nature's  grand 
curtain  rolled  up  and  disclosed  the  same  in  the 
early  morning,  before  the  mad  actors  appeared 
to  trample  it  under  foot,  begrime  it  with  smoke, 
scorch  it  with  fire,  and  deluge  it  with  blood. 

The  sun  was  scarcely  up  before  the  boom  of 
cannon  on  the  turnpike  leading  from  Stone 
Bridge  to  Centrevihe,  announced  that  the  antici- 
pated event, — the  struggle  which  for  three  days 
had  been  suspended  in  abeyance,  the  day  of  de- 
struction and  carnage, — ^liad  come. 

At  an  early  hour,  it  was  evident  to  those  miles 
away,  at  Blackburn's  Ford  and  the  railroad 
bridge,  along  the  Confederate  centre  and  right, 
that  their  companions  in  the  vicinity  of  Stone 
Bridge,  on  the  left,  were  being  steadily  beaten 
back,  and  that  there  would  be  the  scene  of  the 
terrible  conflict.  On  the  centre  and  right,  col- 
umn after  column  was  put  in  motion,  and  made 
forced  marches  for  the  field  of  battle. 

Col.  E arrived  on  the  field   at  a  critical 

moment.  Just  before  his  command  took  a  posi- 
tion, preparatory  for  the  reception  of  the  now 
triumphing,  exultant  onslaught  of  the  enemy 
the  announcement  was  made  to  each  regi- 
ment that  one  man  from  each  company  was 
demanded  for  detached  duty,  to  be  furnished  vol- 
untarily, oi-  by  special  detail,  should  no  one  in 
any  company  feel  disposed  to  volunteer. 

Instantly  the  tall  form  of  Garland  Cloud 
stepped  forward  and  stood  a  few  paces  in  front  of 
his  company,  a  shade  paler  than  usual,  yet  mani- 
festing that  determination  which  meets  death  un- 
moved. Thirty-nine  other  men  stood  on  the 
same  line  with  him,  each  a  solitary  figure,  alone 
in  front  of  his  own   ccfmpany.      Quickly  they 


closed  together,  and  under  charge  of  special 
officers,  moved  rapidly  away  into  the  smoking, 
flaming  jaws  of  death.  At  this  moment  there 
were  more  admiring  eyes  following  and  more 
kindly  feeling  cherished  in  his  company  for  poor 
lowly  born  Cloud  than  his  aristocratic  comrades 
had  ever  before  deigned  to  bestow  upon  this  boy 
of  the  mountain.  Secretly,  each  one  felt  that 
this  child  of  humble  parentage  had  voluntarily 
put  his  body  in  the  place  in  this  over-hazardous 
duty,  which  the  impartial  casting  of  lots  might 
have  fixed  on  an  aristocrat,  perhaps  himself.  Gen. 

Beauregard  strictly  enjoined  Col.  E not  to 

fire  on  some  South  Carolina  troops  in  his  front 
as  they  were  retiring  on  his  position.  This  or- 
der was  duly  communicated  to  commanders  of 
regiments. 

Now  Col.  E 's  long  and  final  opposition  to 

secession  caused  him  to  be  regarded  rather  in  the 
guise  of  a  traitor  than  that  of  a  Southern  patriot, 

by  a  large  element  in  the  army.     Col.  K ,  also 

a  member  of  the  convention,  and  a  zealous  and  un- 
compromising advocate  of  secession,  and  com- 
manding one  of   the  regiments  in  Col.   E 's 

brigade,  mistrusted  his  loyalty.  Through  tiie 
smoke  a  dense  body  of  troops  could  be  discerned 
cautiously  advancing.    Both  ofiicers  and  men  were 

restless.     Col.  E rode  back  and  forth  along 

the  line,  entreating  his  men  not  to  fire,  as  those 
men  were  retiring  friends. 

Col.  K 's  eye  in  the  meantime  had  detected 

the  regulation  blue  and  the  stars  and  stripes,  and 

he   shouted:     "Col.  E ,  they   may   be   your 

friends,  but  I  will  be  d d  if  they  are  mine. 

Fire  on  them,  my  men !  "  The  fire  was  answered 
by  a  withering  volley ;  the  South  Carolinians  had 
fallen  back  on  some  other  point. 

The  day  soon  grew  desperate  for  the  Southern 
arms.  Bee,  Bartow,  and  many  other  gallant  offi- 
cers and  brave  men  were  dead  on  the  field.  The 
Confederates  were  defeated  and  forced  back  at  all 
points.  According  to  all  laws  of  war,  they  were, 
in  the  middle  of  the  afternoon,  hopelessly  beaten. 
Some  bodies  of  troops  rallied  and  faced  the  enemy ; 
but  the  general  tendency  was  toward  a  retrograde 
movement  in  bad  order.  Some  troops  from  one 
of  the  cotton  States  Avere  thus  moving  past 
another  body  in  good  order  and  facing  the  enemy. 


THE  PLAINS  OF  MANASSAS. 


19 


when  tlie  commaiuler  of  the  former  suddenly  ex- 
claiined: 

"For  shame  men,  rally!  Just  look  there  at 
Jackson's  men  standing  like  a  "Stone  Wall!" 

About  this  time  a  body  of  troops  were  discov- 
ered debouching  from  a  dense  wood  on  the  Con- 
federate left  rear,  and  bearing  directly  down  upon 
it;  The  stoutest  heart  quailed.  There  could  be 
but  one  conviction :  the  Federal  commander  had 
detached  a  heavy  column,  which,  by  a  detour 
under  cover  of  this  wood,  had  gained  the  Confed- 
erate rear,  and  was  moving  down  to  complete  the 
annihilation  of  the  discomfited  and  disheartened 
Southerners.  Gen.  Beauregard's  dark,  swarthy 
featm-es  paled.  It  was  a  moment)  of  intense  and 
painful  suspense  bordering  on  desperation.  But 
suddenly  as  a  flash  of  lightning  Beauregard's 
countenance  fired  up  as  he  shouted:  "It  is  E. 
Kerby  Smith!  The  day  is  ours!  Forward!" 
The  efiect  was  magical  and  instantaneous. 

An  Alabama  regiment  wavered  as  its  colors 
went  down  again  and  again.  Beauregard  urged 
his  horse  forward,  seized  the  flag,  whose  folds 
partly  enveloped  his^body,  while  the  clarion  notes 
of  his  voice  were  heard  above  the  surrounding 
tumult : 

"  Follow  your  general !  Victory  is  ours !  " 
And  an  irresistible  wave  rolled  forward  that, 
had  they  not  been  thereby  surprised,  would  have 
overwhelmed  the  Union  troops.  They  have  been 
unjustly  censured  for  flying  so  ignobly  from  a  but 
late  victorious  field.  Had  they  been  exjiecting 
this  assault,  and  fully  prepared  to  meet  it  the  re- 
sult would  have  been  the  same.  Nc  troops  could 
have  withstood  that  mad  torrent  in  the  open  field. 
It  was  the  result  of  a  sudden  reaction,  an  out- 
burst of  enthusiasm  that  sprung  wildly  and  spon- 
taneously from  stifled  despair,  such  as  transforms 
mankind  to  superhuman  beings.  This  was  an 
avalanche  that  swept  all  before  it. 

The  plateau  of  the  renowned  Henry  house  was 
cleared.      The  result  of  the  day  was  no  longer 
doubtful.     A  page  of  history  was  written  in  let- 
ters of  mingled  tears  and  blood. 
"  The  thunder  clouds  close  oyer  It,  which,  when  rent, 
The  earth  was  covered  thick  with  other  clay. 
Which  its  own  clay  shall  cover,  heap'd  and  pent. 
Rider,  horse,— friend,— foe  in  one  red  burial  blent." 

After  the  terrible  conflict  had  spent  its  fury  and 


ceased  to  rage.  Garland  Cloud  and  one  companiori 
of  the  day  were  still  together  without  an  officer, 
amid  the  pitiful,  heart-rending  scenes  of  that 
ghastly  field,  rendering  such  assistance  to  their 
suffering  and  dying  friends  as  their  untutored 
mountain  hands  were  able  to  perform;  and  at 
every  step,  on  every  hand,  they  met  sights  to 
wring  their  yet  pure  and  tender  hearts. 

They  halted  at  one  spot  where  the  ground  was 
literally  covered  with  the  slain  who  fell  in  the 
last  stubborn  and  desperately  contested  struggle. 
Some  lay  with  their  hands  folded  across  their 
breasts  and  a  sweet  smile  on  their  lips.  The  first 
impression  on  a  person  ignorant  of  the  situation 
would  have  been  that  these,  forms  were  a  large 
number  of  men  in  peaceful  and  healthy  slumber,  as 

"  He  who  hath  bent  him  o'er  the  dead, 
Ere  the  first  day  of  death  is  fled. 
And  marked  the  mild,  augelic  air, 
The  rapture  of  repose  that's  there. 
And, but  for  that  ead, shrouded  eye, 
That  fires  not,  wins  not,  weejjs  not  now. 
So  fair,  so  calm,  so  softly  sealed. 
The  first,  last  looks  by  death  revealed  ! 
So  coldly  sweet,  so  deadly  fair, 
We  start,  for  soul  is  wanting  there." 

Passing  on,  they  soon  reached  a  point  where 
none  of  the  badly  wounded  had  been  removed; 
and  the  groans  and  shrieks  were  heart-rending. 

Cloud  and  his  boy  companion,  rude  and  un- 
skilled ministers  of  mercy,  bandaged  wounds 
with  handkerchiefs  and  any  other  material  to  be 
had;  gave  a  sip  of  water,  and  helped  men  to 
points  where  ambulances  could  reach  them. 

"When  they  could  do  no  more  good  at  this 
point,  and  were  moving  away,  they  came  upon  a 
silent,  fair-haired,  smooth-faced,  rosy-cheeked. 
Union  lieutenant.  A  handsome  boy,  beautiful 
as  a  lovely  girl  in  her  teens,  bleeding  to  death 
from  a  wound  in  the  leg. 

Hearing  the  sound  of  footsteps  and  voices,  his 
face  brightened  for  a  moment,  until  his  eye  caught 
the  grey  uniform  advancing  toward  him,  when  a 
dark  scowl  passed  over  his  lovely  features  as  he 
turned  his  head  away  with  an  air  of  despair.  Gar- 
land Cloud's  heart  was  touched  to  the  core.  "  Can 
we  do  something  for  you,  poor  boy,"  he  said  in 
kind  and  sympathetic,  almost  sobbing  tones. 

At  the  sound  of  this  expression  the  poor  sufferer 
turned  his  large,  dreamy,  deep-blue  eyes  up  to 


20 


MYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


the  speaker's  powder-begrimed  face  bending  anx- 
iously over  him,  and  gazed  at  him,  then  at  his  boy 
companion,  for  a  moment  in  mingled  doubt  and 
astonishment;  then  said  slowly  and  hesitatingly  : 
"You  are  enemies  and  offer  me  kindness;  or 
do  I  dream  ?" 

"This  morning  we  were  enemies;  this  evening 
the  cause  of  humanity  makes  us  friends.  Fear 
us  not.  Tell  us  what  we  can  do  for  you,  and  we 
will  help  you  as  brothers,"  Cloud  answered. 

"  Oh,  may  heaven  bless  you  I  I  need  a  kindly 
voice  and  a  friendly  hand  now.  I  am  bleeding 
to  death  from  a  wound  in  the  thigh.  My  hours 
aro  numbered  and  few.  If  not  too  much  to  ask, 
and  possible,  I  beg  that  one  of  you  may  stay  by 
me  until  I  am  gone,  close  my  eyes,  wrap  me  in 
my  blanket,  put  me  in  the  ground  deep  enough  so 
the  rain  won't  uncover  me,  and  write  to  mother." 

The  poor  boy  paused,  choking  with  sobs.  ]5y 
this  time  Cloud  was  ripping  the  pant-leg,  and  in- 
stantly had  the  wound  naked.  Then  jerking  the 
suspenders  and  shirt  from  a  dead  man,  these  Avcre 
quickly  slitted  and  ripjwd  into  bandages  and 
cords ;  a  silk  handkerchief  torn  up,  the  leg  corded, 
the  wound  plugged  and  bandaged  before  another 
word  was  uttered.     Tiien  Cloud  said : 

"  We  must  save  your  life,  Lieutenant.  After 
this  fails  it  will  be  time  to  attend  to  your  request. 
Take  courage.  Now  we  must  carry  you  in  a 
blanket  to  a  surgeon." 

"Oh!  forgive  me  for  coming  to  fight  you.  You 
are  too  kind  to  me;"  and  he  wept  like  a  child. 

It  was  not  long  before  a  kind-hearted  old  sur- 
geon was  bending  over  the  wound.  Soon  the 
artery  was  taken  up  and  tied,  the  wound  dressed, 
and  the  young  soldier  pronounced  cut  of  imme- 
diate danger.  Then  he  slept  for  an  hour.  Cloud 
watched  beside  him  while  his  companion  slept, 
for  it  was  raining,  and  too  dark  for  the  two  boys 
to  seek   their  regiments   until   morning. 

The  wounded  boy  awoke,  drank  some  water, 
expressed  a  few  words  in  acknowledgment  of 
nis  gratitude;  then  for  a  few  moments  his  lips 
moved  as  though  in  silent  prayer,  until  finally  he 
murmured  aloud: 

"Mother,  poor  mother;  it  will  kill  her." 

Then  he  fell  into  a  deep  and  prolonged  sleep. 
When  he  awoke   again  day  was  breaking,  and 


Cloud  and  his  compamon  standing  by  the  lowly 
cot  to  bid  him  farewell.  . 


CHAPTER  YI. 


.AWRENCE    PLEASINGTON. 


"  Wounded  and  sorrowful,  far  from  my  homo, 
Kick  among  strangers,  uncared  for,  unknown." 

Lawrence  Pleasington  was  the  name  of  the 
wounded  captive  beside  whose  feveri.sh  form  Gar- 
land Cloud  and  companion  stood,  in  the  dim  grey 
twilight  on  the  gloomy  morning  after  the  stormy 
July  Sabbath  recorded  in  the  last  chapter,  to  say 
farewell.  The  sun  was  mantled  with  a  thick  black 
veil,  refusing  to  look  upon  the  ghastly  and 
sickening  scenes  still  scattered  all  over  tliat  en- 
sanguined field.  All  Nature  seemed  to  be  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  mourning  throughout  the  land  so 
wid(!-spread  as  to  merit  the  appellation  of  "a  na- 
tion's looe.'"  The  dark  clouds  and  big  rain-drops 
harmonized  with  the  gloomy  distress  and  tears  of 
despair  which  on  this  morning  wrung  and  con- 
vulsed so  many  human  hearts.  Among,  and  one 
of  those  sad  and  disappointed  spirits  was  that  of 
young  Pleasington,  the  poor  wounded  captive.  The 
thought  of  the  cruel  anguish  and  hopeless  despair 
which  his  poor  mother  would  suffer  was  more  to 
his  sad  soul  than  anything  that  could  be  in  store 
for  himself.  It  was  of  her,  and  not  of  self,  that 
lie  lljon-ht. 

Just  now,  too,  the  two  rude,  uncouth  mount- 
aineers, whom  a  few  hours  before  he  had  hated 
so  cordially,  were  about  to  leave  him.  They  had 
been  kind,  humane  and  sympathetic;  for  these 
I'oasons,  in  the  absence  of  anything  more  cheei- 
ful,  it  was  a  comfort  to  the  poor  sufferer  to  look 
into  their  frank  and  generous  faces;  and  what 
assurance  had  he  that  he  would  fall  into  .sjniilar 
hands  after  they  were  gone?  Certainly  there 
could  be  no  eye  to  watch  over  him;  no  hand  to 
minister  unto  him,  to  soothe  his  aching  lirow  or 
smooth  the  rude,  hard  pillow  ;  no  voice  to  greet 
his  ear:  none  of  these  foi'  him  but  such  asene- 
niies  might  bestow.  To  him,  everything,  from  all 
other  sources,  "wasbaned  and  barred,  forbidden 
fare;"  and  this  might  be  bestowed  harshly  and 
unkindly  and  cruelly. 

With    two    great   pearly    tear-drops   starting 


LAWRENCE  PLEASINGTON. 


21 


from  tke  grand  and  winning  eyes,  and  a  quiver 
on  his  lip,  he  ching  to  Cloud's  hand  as^  he  falter- 
ingly  said : 

"Mr.  Cloud,  AvcAvere  arrayed  as  enemies;  from 
you  I  hoped  for  the  harshest  civilized  treatment ; 
this  was  all.  But  you  have  treated  me  as  a  com- 
rade, a  brother.  I  want  your  full  name,  regi- 
ment, company,  and  your  home  post-office.  I 
Avant  to  write  to  mother  and  Effie,  so  they  may 
know  what  you  have  done  for  me,  should  I  not 
live  to  see  them  again.  Effie  is  the  young  lady 
most  dear  to  my  heart.  To-day,  oh  cruel  fate ! 
they  will  mourn  me  dead ;  and  there  is  no  means 
by  which  I  can  let  them  know  that  I  yet  cling  to 
life  by  a  feeble,  uncertain  thread.  I  want  to 
write  to  you  from  the  hospital  and  the  prison  if 
the  authorities  and  you  Avill  permit  me ;  and  if 
you  are  in  reach  and  can  find  me,  please  come 
and  see  me  some  time  this  week,  if  possible.  And 
I  want  the  address  of  your  young  friend." 

"  Lieutenant,  every  thing  in  my  power  I  will 
do  for  you.  Give  me  your  poor  mother's  ad- 
dress. Probably  I  can  get  word  sent  to  her. 
There  must  be  some  flags  of  truce  passing  soon. 
I  will  see  what  can  be  done.  Some  time,  to- 
morrow, perhaps,  I  may  be  in  the  same  fix,"  was 
Cloud's  reply. 

"  May  heaven  bless  and  shield  you  from  harm," 
was  the  wounded  soldier's  sobbing  response. 

At  this  moment  the  surgeon  came  along  look- 
ing at  the  condition  of  the  numerous  sufferers 
under  his  care.     Cloud  addressed  him : 

"  Dr.  Chamberlain,  this  is  the  young  prisoner 
we  brought  you  last  night  in  such  a  critical  con- 
dition. Please  care  for  him,  in  the  name  of  hu- 
manity, for  his  mother  and  his  Effie,  to, the  very 
1  lest  of  your  ability ;  and  please  let  me  know 
where  you  place  him,  until  he  is  able  to  be  trans- 
ferred to  the  interior." 

"  Garland,"  replied  the  doctor,  "  be  assured 
this  shall  be  my  special  care.  I  am  proud  to  see 
such  fine  and  commendable  manifestations  of 
magnanimity  and  humanity  among  our  young 
men." 

"  Farewell,  Lieutenant;  you  are  in  good  hands. 
We  must  hasten  away,"  was  Cloud's  parting  sal- 
utation. His  young  comrade  was  met  the  first 
time  on  the  battle-field,  but  was  a  mountaineer 


from  his  neighboring  or  adjoining  county ;  a 
member  of  another  regiment  in  the  same  brigade, 
and  a  volunteer  in  the  detached  service  with 
Cloud.  But  he  will  appear  again,  and  be  more 
closely  defined. 

Cloud  found  his  regiment  just  moving,  to  go  to 
outpost  duty,  well  down  toward  Alexandria. 

From  the  outpost  he  went  away  to  a  home- 
stead near  by,  ostensibly  to  get  some  canteens 
of  water  for  the  company,  but  in  reality  to  see 
an  old  colored  man  with  whom  he  was  already  on 
intimate  but  somewhat  mysterious  terms,  known 
as  Uncle  Jake. 

Uncle  Jake:  "Well,  for  shure,  young  massa 
Cloud,  you  not  killed,  bress  the  Lawrd  for  dat." 

Cloud  :  "  No,  uncle  Jake,  they  missed  me  this 
time.  But  I  am  delighted  to  find  that  you  did 
Hot  run  off  with  the  Yanks." 

Uncle  Jake  :  "  What  for  I  run  away  ?  Old 
Jake  not  gwine  to  turn  fool  dis  late  in  life,  when 
he  is  freer  dan  de  white  folks." 

Cloud  :  "  Well,  that  is  all  right,  Jake.  But  I 
want  a  little  job  put  right  through.  Here  is  a 
despatch  to  be  at  the  office  in  Alexandria  to- 
night, to  which  an  answer  will  be  received  by  the 
operator,  by  mail,  day  after  to-morrow  morning. 
That  answer  must  be  here  and  in  my  hands  the 
same  evening  before  our  relief  comes.  No  mis- 
takes for  money,  now  mind  you.  I  want  to  let  a 
wounded  Yankee's  mother  know  he  is  not  dead." 

Jake  :  "  Dat's  shure,  ceptin'  Jake  and  de  oder 
mail-carrier  dies." 

Cloud  drew  his  memorandum  book  and  wrote  : 

"Maud  Pleasington,  R . 

"Am  wounded  and  prisoner;  well  treated. 
Wound  not  fatal.  Tell  Effie.  Don't  Avorry.  Write 
to-night,  sure,  care  operator,  Alexandria. 

"  Lawrence.'" 
"  Operator : 

"  Please  send  immediately  and  arrange 
with  bearer  about  mail  ansAver,  Avhen  you  receive 
it,  so  as  to  forAvard  Avithout  delay. 

"  Lawrence  Pleasington. 


Cloud  :  "  Now,  uncle,  here  it  is.  You  under- 
stand that  this  is  more  sacred  than  regular  busi- 
ness, and  not  to  be  breathed  to  our  safest 
friends." 


22 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


Jake:  "  Bress  your  soul,  honey,  dis  old  nig- 
ger's head  not  white  for  nuften  ;  dis  spatch  gwine 
shure,  and  nobody  but  Jake  de  wiser." 

The  two  strange  characters  parted.  Cloud  was 
as  confident  the  dispatch  would  go  and  the  an- 
swer come  as  though  he  was  relying  on  the 
United  States  mail,  in  time  of  peace. 

Not  one  event  of  interest  transpired  at  the 
outpost. 

Late  in  the  afternoon  of  the  appointed  day, 
Cloud  was  at  the  well.  Jake  came  out  of  his 
cabin  grinning  with  the  expected  letter  in  hand, 
for  which  he  received  some  silver  pieces. 

Cloud  :  "  This  has  been  admirably  done,  uncle, 
and  may  not  be  the  last  service  of  the  same 
nature.     I  expect  soon  to  see  you  again." 

Jake  :  "  All  right,  young  massa ;  ole  Jake  pow- 
erful glad  to  see  you  any  time.  Ize  gwine  to  de 
Junction  for  young  missus  to-morrow." 

Cloud  :     "  All  right.     I  may  see  you  there." 

Garland  Cloud  cordially  grasped  the  hand  of 
.the  old  man,  and  then  left  him  bowing  and  court- 
esying  as  few  but  the  genuine,  olden-time,  Vir- 
ginia darkey  could  thus  manifest  the  supreme 
superiority  of  nature's  politeness. 

In  this  old  man, — as  his  wonderful  fertility  of 
resources,  and  tact  of  manipulating  them  with  his 
own  race  and  the  white  people  (both  of  whom 
esteemed  him  without  measure,  and  many  idol- 
ized), enabled  him  to  wield  a  pecuHar  force  of 
influence  that  rendered  him  something  approach- 
ing a  type  of  indefinable  genius, — the  people 
of  his  immediate  section  of  country  and  the 
Confederate  army  had  an  invaluable  factor,  a 
strangely  mystic  agent — an  element  of  action 
that  enchants  the  superstitious  mind  of  the 
colored  race  everywhere.  To  deal  out  the  enig- 
matical, and  surround  himself  and  his  actions  with 
an  air  of  profound  and  incomprehensible  mystery, 
at  once  became  the  ruling  passion  of  the  old 
darkey's  life,  the  centre-head  and  main-spring  of 
his  joy  and  pride.  Nature  had  Avonderfully  fitted 
him  with  the  requisite  endowments  for  playing  this 
role.  The  intoxicating  excitement  of  the  stirring 
scenes,  in  the  midst  of  which  he  lived  and  moved, 
operated  to  develop  these  latent  powers,  and 
afforded  masterful  opportunities  for  their  employ- 
ment.    And  people  were  not  slow  in  perceiving 


their  value,  nor  dilatory  about  putting  them  into 
requisition*  Hence,  within  a  short  time  after 
the  Federal  outposts  were  advanced  any  distance 
from  the  suburbs  of  Alexandria,  Uncle  Jake  was 
a  general  agent  for  the  underground  mail  and 
secret-service  bureau  of  the  border ;  and  he  had 
his  net-work  of  connections  extended  in  all  di- 
rections for  many  miles  around,  through  the 
colored  race,  with  whom  he  was  a  famous  char- 
acter many  years  before  the  Avar. 

His  half  a  century  of  virtual  emancipation  f  i-om 
the  oppressive  feature  of  human  bondage — that 
broken  yoke  of  his  slavery  which  he  no  longer 
wore — his  many  accomplishments  and  the  lati- 
tude his  immunity  from  restraint  allowed  him  to 
parade  before  admiring  multitudes,  together  with 
his  snowy  locks  and  beard — were  Avell  calculated  to 
inspire  veneration,  and  transformed  the  otherwise 
common-place  old  darkey  into  an  objectof  bound- 
less popularity  with  all  classes  of  people ;  but  with 
his  own  race  shed  about  him  a  halo  of  magic 
mystery,  and  clothed  his  name  with  an  awe-in- 
spiring grandeur. — For  Jake  to  be  a  traitor  to  the 
cause  of  the  South  was  not  within  the  harmony 
of  things — the  strongest  ties  which  bound  him  to 
the  earth.  With  his  own  idolizing  race  the  ques- 
tion of  his  loyalty  entered  not  into  the  scale  of 
estimation.  He  loved  his  own  people  Avith  the 
deep  devotion  of  a  true  child  of  Nature ;  they 
adored  him.  That  he  Avas  a  traitor  to  them,  he 
never  dreamed. 

There  was  not  the  slightest  difficulty  about  the 
old  man's  ability  to  abuse  the  credulity  of  the 
Federal  troops, — an  art  in  the  practice  of  Avhich 
he  Avas  a  consummate  adept.  As  to  the  part 
Jake's  assistants  took  in  the  enterprise  of 
which  he  was  the  moving  spirit,  they  Avere 
as  true  as  Jake  himself;  but  actuated  by  no 
principles  of  fidelity  to  any  interest  involved,  save 
alone  to  that  indefinable  one  concealed  in  the  old 
man's  personality,  and  the  instinctive  fascination 
for  the  proud  distinction  of  being  the  faithful  bearer 
of  any  communication.  This  is  an  incomprehensi- 
ble characteristic  of  the  colored  race,  that  excites 
a  spirit  of  zeal  and  enthusiasm  in  an  undertaking 
of  this  nature,  sufficient  to  induce  a  colored  per- 
son of  either  sex  to  endure  cold,  hunger  and 
fatigue,  and  to  brave  dangers — often  Avalking  many 


LAWEENCE  PLEASINGTON. 


23 


miles  through  the  worst  weather  of  winter  and 
crossing  swollen  streams  at  the  peril  of  life — a 
greater  peril  than  the  bearer  of  the  National  mails 
is  required  to  hazard — and  without  the  least  defi- 
nite assurance  of  reward — in  order  to  forward  a 
non-important  letter  to  its  destination.  We  may 
venture  the  assertion,  with  confidence,  that  a. 
price-list  on  a  postal-card  Avill  travel  to  its  desti- 
nation one  hundred  miles,  anywhere  in  the  South- 
ern States,  if  its  transmission  be  but  intrusted  to 
the  care  of  the  colored  race,  and  that  scarcely  one 
in  a  thousand  would  miscarry. 

In  addition  to  this  actuating  incentive,  ample  by 
itself  to  prompt  the  colored  people  to  carry  letters, 
regardless  of  their  character,  anywhere  through  or 
within  the  Federal  lines,  it  was  an  easy  matter  for 
Jake  to  infuse  into  the  beings  of  his  simple- 
minded  race  a  love  for  the  air  of  mystery  within 
which  his  own  existence  was  so  amazingly 
shrouded,  and  to  induce  them  to  adopt  most  skill- 
ful methods  to  conceal  letters  while  in  transit,  and 
to  frame  the  most  plausible  pretexts  to  pass  the 
lines.  Very  small  children  were  sometimes  sent 
on  ostensibly  different  pretenses — the  most  natural 
neighborly  errands. 

But  all  these  things  were  wonderfully  facili- 
tated by  the  unbounded  confidence  reposed  by  the 
Union  troops  in  the  unswerving  fidelity  of  the 
colored  race, — an  element  prized '  for  its  intrinsic 
value,  without  estimating  the  detriment  of  its 
probable  dangers ;  an  oversight  originating  on  the 
part  of  the  Northern  people  in  their  ignorance  of 
the  true  character  and  swaying  impulses  of  the 
colored  people — lesson§  that  the  lapse  of  twenty 
years  has  not  sufficed  to  inculcate. 

But  not  so  with  the  people  of  the  South,  with 
whom  the  advantage  was  thus  poised.  They 
knew  alike  the  valuable  and  the  dangerous 
element  of  the  colored  population  to  their  cause 
— used  the  one  and  guarded  against  the  other. 
Time  has  not  changed  the  situation  very  materi- 
ally, when  the  relations  of  the  colored  race  to 
pohtics  are  viewed  from  the  same  standpoint  of 
Southern  interest.  The  Southern  people  still  un- 
derstand the  freedman,  because  they  knew  his 
predominating  characteristics  as  a  slave — and 
these  neither  the  boundless  privileges  of  freedom 
nor  the  elevating  influences  of  education  possess 


any  power  to  change.  The  Northern  people  un- 
derstood not  these  in  the  slave  character ;  no  bet- 
ter do  they  understand  the  same  elements  of  the 
freedman's  composition.  The  interests  of  the 
freedman  are  inextricably  blended  with  the  inter- 
ests of  the  white  people  of  the  South;  and  the 
more  enlightened  the  former  becomes,  the  more 
firmly  are  his  relations  cemented  to  the  common 
weal  of  his  own  fair,  sunny  land. 

Garland  Cloud  understood  Uncle  Jake,  and 
properly  appreciated  his  peculiar  merits. 

The  love  of  adventure  acquired  in  early  life  by 
the  hardy  mountaineer  or  the  venturesomp  fron- 
tiersman, tempts  him  to  pass  the  neutral  ground 
of  war's  critical  domain,  and  to  tempt  fate  beyond 
the  limits  of  the  dead-line;  and  to  this  rule 
young  Cloud  was  no  exception.  Beyond  the 
picket-post  there  was  a  luring  fascination  for 
him.  The  stealthy  creeping  of  the  still  hunter 
enabled  him  to  evade  the  lax  vigilance  of  the  in- 
experienced volunteer  vedette  or  picket-sentry 
almost  with  impunity,  and  often  in  broad 
daylight. 

The  charming  courtesy  and  Avitching  flattery 
lavished  upon  one  who  thus  presumed  to  defy 
danger  and  cross  the  lines  of  the  enemy,  by 
the  fair  daughters  of  Dixie,  constituted,  it  must 
be  granted,  a  strong  temptation  to  pass  the 
confines  of  mortal  danger,  in  order  to  enjoy  the 
raptures  of  the  clandestine  ovations  and  deUcate 
luncheons  from  the  mystic  treasures  of  the 
Virginia  mansion,  that  nothing  -but  consuming 
flames  seemed  able  entirely  to  deplete.  Such 
ever  awaited  any  one  who  took  the  chances  to  call 
where  the  grey  uniform  of  the  Confederacy  was 
rarely  seen,  and  had  much  to  do  with  Cloud's  early 
ventures.  These  he  made  without  the  permission, 
or  the  knowledge  even,  of  his  commanders  or 
comrades.  Being  a  good  soldier  he  had  no  diffi- 
culty to  procure  a  pass  to  be  absent  from  roll-call 
for  twenty-four  hours  any  day  when  he  was  not 
on  duty.  This  he  invariably  used  to  make  ex- 
cursions beyond  the  limits  of  the  territory 
scoured  by  the  foraging  individuals  and  parties  of 
his  friends,  where  smiling  hospitality,  dispensed  by 
the  charms  of  beauty's  sheen,  lent  to  danger  a 
fascinating  enchantment.  Thus  encouraged,  he 
yearned  to  link  duty  with  pleasure,  which  would 


24 


MYSTIC  EOMAXCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


become  trebly  enhanced,  and  blossom  with  new 
delights,  as  they  grew  to  be  promoting  factors 
auxiliary  to  the  public  service. 

In  these  early  rambles  Cloud  made  the  acquaint- 
ance of  Uncle  Jake;  always  met  him  after  the 
first  contact — sometimes  by  special  appointment, 
and  learned  from  his  young  mistress,  and  other 
people  in  the  community,  the  character  and  the 
capabilities  of  the  old  darkey. 

Already  mutual  confidence  and  reciprocal  bonds 
of  interest  had  been  established  and  sealed  be- 
tween the  young  mountaineer  and  the  old  darkey 
of  the  aristocratic  mansion. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE    CONTRABAND    LETTERS. 

"  The  violet  still  grows  in  the  depth  of  the  valleys. 

Though  withered,  thy  tear  will  unfold  it  again." 

— Bykon. 

Lieutenant  Pleasington  lay  rather  restless 
and  impatient,  with  his  face  to  the  wall,  on  a  rude 
but  clean  cot,  in  a  hospital  ward  at  Manassas,  on 
an  oppressively  hot  July  afternoon,  the  fourth 
day  after  he  Avas  Avounded — his  fourth  day  of 
suftering  and  captivity. 

Hearing  a  cautious  footstep  approaching,  he 
turned  his  head.  Garland  Cloud  stood  beside  his 
cot. 

Cloud:  "Lieutenant,  before  asking  hoAV  you 
are,  I  will  give  you  a  soothing  opiate." 

He  handed  the  wounded  boy  a  letter.  When 
tlie  poor  sufferer's  eye  caught  the  post-mark,  to- 
gether with  the  well-known  characters  of  the 
address,  his  astonishment  and  joy  were  bound- 
less. Nothing,  but  for  his  mother  to  have  been 
bending  over  him,  would  have  more  surprised 
him.  Eagerly  he  broke  the  seal,  and  found  under 
it  tAvo  iuclosures.     One  Avas: 

"My  Poor,  Dear  Boy: 

"  Your  shocking  telegram  relieved  our 
cruel  suspense ;  and  humbly  do  I  thank  God  that 
it  is  no  Avorse.  I  shall  most  earnestly  pray 
for  your  recovery  and  safe  return  home.  This 
Avas  our  first  tidings  of  you.  Everything  here  is 
mingled  confusion,  suspense,  distress  and  mourn- 
ing. Nothing  definite  has  been  heard  concern- 
ing our  boys,  except  some  Avho  Avere   killed  or 


Avounded  early  in  the  day— Sunday.  We  hope 
soon  to  receive  a  letter  from  you,  telling  us  more 
fully  your  condition.  Every  one  thinks  it  so 
strange  that  Ave  should  have  heard  from  you  so 
promptly,  and  you  Avounded  and  a  prisoner.  Per- 
haps your  letter,  when  it  comes,  Avill  explain  this 
mystery.  Please  try  to  write  soon.  Be  patient, 
and  trust  the  good  Lord.  We  shall  hope  for  the 
best.     Muck  love  from  your  loving  mother. 

"M.  P." 


The  other  letter  was  yet  more  eagerly  read, 
Avithout  remembering  even  the  presence  of  the 
bearer ;  it  Avas : 

"My  Esteemed  Friend: 

"  I  write  in  haste  to  assure  you  of 
my  deep  sympathy  for  you  in  your  terrible  mis- 
fortune. How  kind  to  remember  me  in  your 
short  dispatch  to  your  mother.  I  appre- 
ciate those  two  words,  under  the  painful  and 
trying  circumstances  in  which  you  Avrote  them, 
more  than  a  long  letter  when  you  are  well  and 
free.  If  you  can,  write  a  line  to  your  little 
friend  "  "Effie.'' 

Lieut.  Pleasington  turned  his  welling  eyes  up 
to  Cloud's  face  interrogatively ;  for  the  moment 
his  heart  was  too  full  to  speak. 

Cloud  :  "  Don't  ask  me  hoAv  it  is.  Lieuten- 
ant. You  have  the  result  of  your  commission ; 
that  is  the  extent  of  your  interest  in  the  matter; 
the  means  is  my  affair." 

Pleasington  :  "  My  gratitude  to  you  no  Avords 
can  express;  and  nothing  in  the  bounds  of  human 
^ssibility  can  ever  pay  you  my  debt." 

Cloud:  "Your  extreme  youth  and  lonely, 
friendless  situation  on  the  bank  of  the  dark  river, 
in  the  midst  of  the  shadoAvs  of  death,  aroused  my 
pity  and  created  uncontrollable  sympathy  for 
you ;  and  your  maternal  devotion  stirred  the  soul 
Avithin  me.  Thus  was  I  impulsively  prompted  to 
do  the  trifling  favors  Avhich  seem  to  have  so 
overAvhelmed  you  with  gratitude.  Well,  and 
Avith  your  armor  buckled  on,  no  man  under  our 
colors  would  fight  you  Avith  more  desperate  de- 
termination. Disarmed,  Avounded  and  helpless, 
Ave  have  very  fcAV  men  Avho  Avould  not  treat  you 


THE  contraba:nd  letters. 


25 


as  I  have  treated  you,  under  similar  circumstances 
and  with  the  same  opportunity.  The  only  debt 
you  owe  me  is  to  treat  the  poorest  soldier  lad  in 
our  ranks  the  same  as  I  have  treated  you,  so  far 
as  you  are  able,  whenever  a  wounded  one  falls 
into  your  hands.  The  doctor  tells  me  you  are 
safe  to  get  well.  He  will  now  find  you  much 
lietter.  To-morrow  my  command  moves  far  over 
near  the  Potomac.  I  shall  see  you  no  more 
until  we  meet  on  the  battle-field.  I  have  some 
little  matters  to  look  after  for  an  hour.  During 
this  time  prepare  ansAvers  to  your  letters,  and 
they  will  reach  your  mother  and  Effie.  After 
this  you  may  not  find  it  so  easy  and  quick  to  com- 
municate with  home.  Mention  no  names  in  con- 
nection with  the  transmission  of  letters.  As  to 
the  liattle-field  and  hospital,  I  do  not  care  what  you 
Avrite;  but  this  letter  business  might  compromise 
me  unpleasantly.  Here  are  all  the  materials  for 
writing." 

Without  waiting  for  a  reply.  Cloud  walked 
rapidly  out  of  the  building,  leaving  the  wounded 
officer  to  write  his  letters  to  mother  and  Effie. 
Cloud  returned  just  as  the  envelope  covering  the 
letters  was  addressed,  which  had  been  left  un- 
sealed for  him  to  read  the  contents. 

Cloud  :  "  Seal  it  up  securely.  Lieutenant;  I  have 
no  desire  to  read  it.  Your  family  and  private 
matters  are  sacred.  It  is  not  in  your  power  to 
write  a  word  detrimental  to  our  public  interest." 

Pleasington:  "It  repents  me  that  I  have 
fought  your  people.  I  shall  not  again  enter  the 
service." 

Cloud  :  "  Yes,  you  will.  National  pride  and 
popular  pressure  will  speedily  cure  this  weak- 
ness, ^^oung  men  in  your  section  will  have  no 
option,  any  more  than  those  with  us  will  have. 
Going  into  the  army  will  be  a  necessity,  no  mat- 
ter how  much  inclination  rebels  against  it.  You 
must  be  either  against,  or  for  us.  There  is  no 
neutral  ground  for  you.  Rather  than  array  your- 
self against  your  own  section  and  people,  you 
Avill  go  Avith  them ;  and  this  means  against  us  to 
the  bitter  end." 

Pleasington:  "Perhaps  you  may  be  correct. 
If  you  are,  I  much  regret  it.  I  am  a  poor  boy, 
the  son  of  an  humble  mother,  who  has  been  a 
poor,  lone  Avidow  ever  since  I  was  one  year  old. 


Really,  I  do  not  know  for  what  I  am  fighting.  I 
have  nearly  lost  my  life,  and  noAv  owe  it  to  the 
very  people  Avhom  I  raised  my  hand  to  smite,  on 
their  own  soil,  as  its  invader.  God  knoAvs  that 
if  there  is  any  honorable  Avay  out,  I  shall  leave 
this  service^  which  must  be  loathsome  to  me, 
since  I  know  the  people  whom  I  am  to  fight." 

Cloud:  "Ah,  Lieutenant!  if  the  people  of  the 
two  sections  only  kncAV  one  another  better,  our 
troubles  would  quickly  terminate ;  but  alas !  they 
neither  know  nor  understand  one  another ;  so 
there  are  many  dark  and  trying  days  to  come. 
If  there  Avas  no  other  cause  nor  influence  to 
force  you  back  to  your  colors,  your  lady  love 
Avould  soon  prompt  you  to  return.  Ladies  ad- 
mire brave  men.  You  could  not  bear  to  hear 
the  praises  of  others  on  every  tongue,  and  still 
remain  at  home  regarded  as  a  shirk  from  duty 
and  danger.  The  silent  reproach  from  your  Effie's 
eyes  Avould  be  an  order  youAvould  not  attempt  to 
disobey.  Young  men  in  the  South  Avho  lag  at 
home  are  ostracized  by  young  ladies  as  vaga- 
bonds.    It  Avill  come  to  this  Avith  you." 

Pleasington  :  "  You  are  right.  Effie  is  a  proud, 
high-spirited  girl,  far  above  my  plane  of  life  in 
the  social  world,  and  is  heart  and  soul  Avith  the 
Government  in  favor  of  the  war  to  preserve  the 
Union." 

Cloud:  "My  time  Avith  you.  Lieutenant,  is 
ended.     Farewell." 

Pleasington:  "  FareAvell,  Mr.  Cloud,  and  may 
health  and  safety  attend  you." 

Thus  parted  these  youthful  Avarriors,  but  chil- 
dren of  nature  and  the  souls  of  sincerity.  The 
highest  standard  of  honor,  and  the  most  laudable 
nobihty  of  purpose,  pervaded  and  controlled  their 
minds  and  their  hearts.  Of  such  material  are  the 
finest  models  of  heroes  molded.  Little  did  these 
guileless  sons  of  obscurity  dream  of  the  wild  and 
trying  scenes  through  which  they  were  destined 
to  pass,  in  their  alloted  parts  in  the  wild  drama 
of  life. 

About  their  meeting  and  its  sequence  thus 
far  there  is  nothing  particularly  extraordinary. 
Thousands  of  cases  might  be  reported  that  Avould 
not  materially  difi'er  from  this  one  in  some  feat- 
ures. The  incidents  on  the  battle-field  and  at 
the  hospital  that  night  and  the  next  morning, 


26 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


were  similar  to  ten  thousand ;  and  had  that  com- 
l^leted  the  history,  the  record  would  have  no 
place  in  these  pages.  Smuggling  letters  for 
prisoners,  and  delivering  them  from  the  hand  of 
one  picket  to  that  of  his  foeman  in  person,  was 
not  an  unfrequent  occurrence.  Hence4;he  sending 
and  receiving  of  letters  as  detailed,  was  not  a 
very  remarkable  circumstance :  isolated,  it  would 
deserve  no  attention.  But  the  winding  vicissi- 
tudes, in  their  tortuous  progression  from  cause 
to  effect,  invest  these  otherwise  untenable  posi- 
tions with  ramparts  of  importance  that  stand 
forth  bristling  in  defiant  impregnability.  To  in- 
dicate these  features,  would  be  to  anticipate  the 
startling  surprises  which  they  hold  in  reserve. 
They  will,  in  due  time,  develop  and  demon- 
strate some  masterful  mysteries  of  Destiny  in 
the  affairs  of  mortal  life  on  earth.  And  the 
meeting  of  these  boy-foes  had  various  ends  to 
subserve. 

Cloud  had  not  been  five  minutes  out  of  the 
presence  of  the  wounded  captain,  when  his  letter 
passed  into  the  hands  of  Uncle  Jake. 

Colored  people  were  used  in  secret  service,  in 
the  interest  of  the  Federal  army,  to  very  great 
advantage;  but,  as  a  rule,  when  manipulated  by 
Southern  Unionists.  The  Union  element  that 
existed  in  some  of  the  Southern  States  was  often 
a  powerful  auxiliary  to  Federal  commanders,  and 
furnished  them  with  most  valuable  information. 
Many  Union  men  were  in  the  employ  and  ser- 
vice of  the  Confederate  Government;  and  in  the 
chief  departments  at  Richmond  were  some  of 
them  to  be  found. 

Miss  Van  Lew,  of  Richmond,  a  character  that 
does  not  properly  belong  in  our  plot — one,  how- 
ever, well  known  in  National  circles,  by  her  real 
name,  which  therefore  we  do  not  disguise,  and 
which  we  use  merely  to  strengthen  a  position 
already  assumed  relative  to  secret-service  mys- 
teries— was  a  power  worth  more  to  the  Union 
cause  than  some  major-generals  who  graced,  and 
probably  sometimes  disgraced,  the  rolls  of  the 
United  States  army  during  the  war. 

She  was  a  lady  of  some  considerable  means. 
As  she  was  a  Southern  lady,  we  cannot  admire 
her  as  an  ideal  heroine — arrayed,  as  she  was, 
against   the   people    of  her  native  land — as  we 


would  be  forced  to  admire  her  had  she  been  a 
citizen  of  a  Northern  State.  But,  however,  with 
her  it  was  a  case  of  freedom  of  conscience,  that 
required  nerve  and  indomitable  will  to  support 
her  in  the  perilous  part  she  assumed  in  the 
BLOODY  DRAMA,  SO  truly  grand  and  heroic  as  to 
outrival  any  other  individual  instance  of  femi- 
nine devotion  to  the  cause  of  the  Union  to  be 
anywhere  found  on  record,  because  the  hazard 
with  which  she  was  all  the  time  imperiled  was 
appalling.  This  at  once  placed  the  wondrous 
grandeur  of  her  devotion  beyond  comparison 
with  that  of  ladies  in  the  Northern  States. 

Miss  Van  Lew  had  a  residence  in  Richmond,  a 
farm  in  the  country  below  that  city,  and  owned 
and  employed  slaves. 

As  a  matter  of  course,  she  knew  the  L'nion 
men  of  Richmond,  including  those  employed  by, 
and  in  the  service  of,  the  Confederate  Govern- 
ment. 

She  had  influence  brought  to  bear  to  secure 
the  appointment  of  young  Ross,  a  nephew  of 
Frank  Stearns,  a  rich  Unionist  of  Richmond,  to 
the  position  of  an  office  in  Libby  Prison. 

Young  Ross  was,  ostensibly,  a  terror  to  Union 
prisoners,  and  cordially  detested  by  them,  while 
he  was  constantly  and  systematically  permitting 
and  aiding  them  to  escape — a  fact  never  known 
to  those  who  had  not  escaped,  many  of  whom 
sought  him,  to  take  his  life  when  the  end  did 
come,  and  they  were  liberated. 

Miss  Van  Lew,  in  the  meantime,  concealed 
and  sent  the  escaped  prisoners  out  of  the  Con- 
federate lines.  Besides  her  own  home,  she  main- 
tained at  her  own  expense  several  other  houses  in 
Richmond  at  which  escaped  prisoners  were  con- 
cealed. In  order  to  secure  the  safe  conduction 
of  such  prisoners  to  these  places  of  rendezvous, 
she  constantly  kept  several  bright  negro  men 
on  duty  in  the  vicinity  of  Libby  to  Avatch  for 
escaped  prisoners. 

She  had  friends  and  accomplices  in  the  Adju- 
tant-General's and  Engineers'  Departments  at 
Richmond,  who  furnished  her  with  correct  sta- 
tistics of  the  army  and  plans  of  the  defenses  of 
Richmond,  which  she  transmitted  regularly  to 
the  Federal  commander.  This  was  safely  accom- 
plished  by   the    assistance  of  a  shoemaker,  Avho 


BEYOND  THE   OUTPOSTS. 


27 


inclosed  the  documents  in  the  hollow  soles  of  bro- 
gan  shoes,  invented  for  that  purpose,  and  worn 
by  negroes  who  came  regularly  from  Miss  Van 
Lew's  farm  to  market  in  Richmond — two  pair  of 
shoes  being  provided  for  each  individual ;  but  he 
never  wore  the  same  pair  back  to  the  farm  which 
he  wore  to  the  city.  The  shoes  were  exchanged 
— the  ones  worn  back  to  the  farm  contained  con- 
traband information ;  the  others  were  left  behind 
to  be  thus  prepared  for  the  next  trip. 

These  are  facts  that  may  be  substantiated  by 
the  best  authority  in  the  nation,  yet  are  no  more 
real  than  others  which  we  shall  present,  with  the 
true  names  of  characters  disguised. 

To  Miss  Van  Lew,  we  think  the  National 
G-overnment  has  manifested  monstrous  ingrati- 
tude in  not  rewarding  her  self-sacrificing  devotion 
with  the  full  restoration  of  her  fortune,  con- 
tributed to  the  cause  of  the  Union,  and  in  not 
granting  her  a  life  pension,  instead  of  compelling 
her  to  continue  laboring  for  the  Government  in 
order  to  earn  a  subsistence,  abundantly  due,  with- 
out additional  services. 

Ross  has  been  dead  some  time,  and  Miss  Van 
Lew  is  publicly  known  in  her  true  character,  or 
we  should  not  now  name  them.  Their  accomplices 
will  not  mention 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

BEYOND     THE     OUTPOSTS. 

"  We  Wither  from  our  youth,  we  gasp  away — 

Sick — sick ;  unfound  the  boon,  unslaked  the  thirst — 
Through  to  the  last,  inverge  of  our  decay, 

Some  phantom  lures,  such  as  we  sought  at  first — 
But  all  too  late — so  are  we  doubly  cursed. 

Love,  fame,  ambition,  avarice — 'tis  the  same — 
Each  idle,  all  ill,  and  none  the  worst— 

For  all  are  meteors  with  a  different  name, 
And  Death  the  sable  smoke  where  vanishes  the  flame. ' ' 

— Bykon. 

The  immediate  comrades  of  G-arland  Cloud 
were  much  surprised  when  an  order  was  pro- 
mulgated detaching  him  from  his  company  for 
special  but  unindicated  duty. 

But  Cloud  knew  well  enough  its  nature,  and 
the  efforts  he  had  quietly  made  to  secure  it. 
It  was  scouting  beyond  the  Confederate  out- 
posts, around  the  pickets  and  into  the  lines  of 
the  enemy  ;   any  points   that   it  might  be  prac- 


ticable to  reach  wherever  information  could  be 
obtained. 

For  many  days  at  a  time  he  was  absent,  and 
his  company  would  not  hear  from  him.  AVlien 
he  did  sometimes  visit  hia  comrades,  they  could 
gain  from  him  no  information  relative  to  the 
scope  of  his  duties,  nor  the  adventures  neces- 
sarily inseparable  therefrom.  Malignant  fever 
decimated  the  ranks  of  his  regiment  until  there 
absolutely  were  no  really  well  men  for  guard 
duty.  Then  he  visited  his  company  often,  al- 
ways bringing  the  sick  some  delicacies,  and  usually 
on  a  captured  horse.  Sometimes,  but  rarely,  he 
had  a  prisoner. 

He  came  in  one  evening,  late  in  October. 
The  night  was  chilly  and  damp.  Edgar  Harman, 
one  of  the  most  haughty  aristocrats  in  the  com- 
pany, and  one  who  had  been  most  notably  un- 
kind to  Cloud,  was  detailed  for  guard  duty. 
The  man  was  actually  too  ill  to  do  any  dut)'-, 
but  there  was  no  one  in  the  company  in  better 
health  to  take  his  place  among  those  subject  to 
detail  on  that  day.  He  staggered  as  he  walked. 
Cloud  watched  him  take  his  post,  and  walk  the 
beat  three  or  four  times;  he  could  bear  it  no 
longer,  and  he  went  over  to  the  sick  man. 

Cloud:  "Harman,  you  are  too  sick  for  this 
duty ;  this  night's  service  will  kill  you.  I  have 
been  watching  you,  and  thinking  of  the  agony 
the  sight  I  beheld  would  cause  your  father  and 
sister,  could  they  see  you  now.  It  really  seemed 
to  me  that  I  could  hear  them  entreating  me  to 
save  you;    and  I  must  do  it." 

Harman  :  "  Oh  Cloud !  you  could  certainly 
think  of  doing  nothing  for  me,  was  this  pos- 
sible. I  have  treated  you  so  shamefully  in  the 
past.  There  is  no  way  by  which  yo^^i  could 
save  me.  I  am  conscious  that  this  night  will 
kill  me." 

Cloud:  "I  shall  take  jom  place.  Call  the 
officer  of  the  guard,  please.  1  am  not  consider- 
ing the  past.  I  am  thinking  of  saving  the  life 
of  a  comrade." 

Harman:  "Generous  fellow!  now  do  you 
heap  coals  of  fire  on  my  head.  I  am  unworthy 
to  receive  your  kindness.  Forgive  me.  Cloud, 
and  to  the  end  of  life  I  shall  be  your  true  and 
devoted  friend.     It  pains  me  to  see  you  take  my 


28 


aiYSTIC  ROIklANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


place.  You  appear  to  be  worn  out.  But  to  re- 
ject your  offer  would  be  madness,  little  short  of 
.suicide." 

The  next  day  Edgar  Harnian  was  delirious. 
Cloud  obtained  permission,  and  remained  with 
him  forty-eight  hours,  until  the  fever  was 
broken.  After  this  he  came  in  every  other  day 
Avith  some  refreshments  for  his  sick  comrade,  until 
he  was  sufficiently  convalesced  to  be  sent  home. 

Some  weeks  later  the  beautiful  and  accom- 
pli.«hed  sister  of  Harman,  the  belle  of  her  com- 
munity and  of  the  renowned  school  where  she 
had  recently  graduated,  wrote  a  letter  to  Gar- 
land Cloud,  breathing  in  every  line  the  finest 
sentiments  of  deep  and  unfeigned  gratitude; 
as  she  and  her  family  recognized  themselves 
to  be  indebted  to  him  for  his  kind  and  mag- 
nanimous treatment  of  her  sick  brother.  She 
concluded  by  assuring  him  that,  henceforth,  be- 
tween his  family  and  hers  there  was  no  longer 
a  social  barrier.  This  letter  awaited  him  at  head- 
quarters on  his  return  from  a  ten  days'  expe- 
dition. This  embarrassed  and  troubled  him;  yet 
he  answered  it  with  polite  and  guarded  brevity, 
delicately  assuring  the  young  lady  that  all  he  did 
for  her  brother  was  simply  done  in  obedience  to 
the  bidding  of  duty,  due  at  all  times  to  a  com- 
rade, and  in  acquiescence  to  the  obvious  de- 
mands of  humanity.     Other  letters  followed. 

This  aristocratic  young  lady  wrote  to  the  plebian 
soldier-boy,  entreating  him  to  regard  the  mem- 
bers of  her  family  as  friends  who  acknowledged 
his  natural  nobility  of  character,  and  admired 
his  chivalrous  bearing  as  a  soldier, — qualities 
which  they  esteemed  second  to  those  of  no  one 
embraced  in  their  own  select  social  circle.  With 
witching  and  irresistible  suavity  of  style,  and 
the  most  delicate  modesty  of  diction,  she  con- 
jured him  to  write  to  the  family  sometimes,  and 
give  a  few  sketches  of  the  wild  and  perilous 
border-life  he  was  leading,  Avhich  she  believed 
to  bo  full  of  the  most  intensely  thrilling  romance. 

For  a  long  time  he  replied  indifferently  and 
briefly,  excusing  himself  on  the  ground  that  he 
wanted  the  accomplishments  of  finished  educa- 
tion necessary  to  enable  him  to  write  so  as  to 
entertain  people  of  refinement.  But  this  defense 
availed  him  nothinir. 


Few  men,  and  more  especially  young  soldiers 
whose  vanity  has  been  a  little  flattered,  can  be 
so  niggardly  and  ungallant  as  bluntly  and  per- 
sistently to  refuse  a  reasonable,  or  even  an  unrea- 
sonable, request  to  one  among  the  most  elevated 
and  beautiful  of  women.  This  was  precisely  the 
predicament  of  young  Cloud.  Sometimes  he 
Avould  remember  with  bitterness  the  social  line 
of  the  olden  time ;  his  own  still  lowly  station 
in  life;  would  reflect  upon  the  uncharitable 
comments  and  heartless  criticisms  a  long  letter 
from  him  would  provoke  in  that  brilliant  circle 
to  which  he  was  solicited  to  expose  himself  on 
paper ;  how  he  had  obstinately  refused  his  com- 
rades and  every  one  else  the  vaguest  account  of 
his  service,  or  even  trivial  incidents  connected 
with  it ;  how  unkindly  many  of  his  comrades 
felt,  and  how  jealous  they  were  on  account  of 
that  service ;  and  how  it  would  expose  him  to 
ridicule  and  jeers  and  .slurs  as  soon  as .  others 
learned  that  he  had  recounted  his  adventures  to  a 
young  lady  of  rank  with  whom  it  was  well 
known  that  he  was  personally  unacquainted ;  then 
he  would  resolve  persistently  to  excuse  himself 
until  the  subject  should  be  abandoned  by  the 
witching  enchantress. 

When  a  young  lady  who  is  accustomed  to  re- 
ceive homage  from  everybody,  everywhere,  un- 
der all  circumstances,  sets  her  heart  on  some 
special  conquest  and  is,  for  the  first  time,  in  her 
triumphant  reign,  crossed  in  her  purpose,  she 
does  not  abandon  it  with  alacrity,  but  becomes 
more  intensely  engrossed  with  its  prosecution, 
provided  this  be  to  bring  the  rebellious  heart  of  a 
man  to  the  recognition  of  his  allegiance  to  the 
sway  of  the  imperial  princess. 

To  Miss  Harman,  Cloud's  perversity  seemed 
wonderful.  His  humble  station  in  life  and  the 
moderate  nature  of  her  request  augmented  the 
aggravation  of  his  unreasonable  conduct.  Thus  she 
viewed  it,  and  this  provoked  her  to  redouble  her 
efforts  to  bear  off  the  palm  of  victory.  She  could 
rely  on  the  chiA^alry  of  Virginia  to  meet  her 
strategy  with  difiident  courtesy,  for  a  son  of  the 
Old  Dominion — whether  of  the  mountain  or  the 
vale — ever  treats  a  lady  with  admirable  gallantry. 
Upon  this  a  lady  may  presume,  although  she  be 
pressing  the  most  unreasonable  demands. 


BEYOND  THE  OUTPOSTS. 


29 


Had  Cloud  never  yieldeil,  the  thread  of  his 
startling  story  might  never  have  traced  its 
meandering  course  over  the  eaith. 

After  the  lapse  of  nearlj-^  twenty-two  years 
we  have  succeeded  in  procuring  copies  of  a  few 
of  the  more  prominent  letters  of  that  corre- 
spondence of  the  dark  and  bloody  days  of  wast- 
ing war.  How  we  obtained  these  will  be  demon- 
strated in  tlie  due  course  of  developments.  But 
here  is  the  place  for  the  letters  to  appear.  At 
last  he  thus  Avrote  this  eartlily  angel: 

"  Army  of  Northern  Va.,  December,  1861. 
"Miss  Carpie  V.  Harman. 

'■'■  EstimaUe  Lady : 

"In  reply  to  your  interesting  letter,  I  beg  to 
assure  you  that  it  would  aflbrd  me  real  pleasure 
to  comply  with  your  request,  but  for  obstacles 
referred  to  in  my  last  note,  which  still  appear  to 
me  insurmountable.  I  know  my  course  must  ap- 
pear rude.  This  T  regret,  but  see  no  feasible  way 
to  remedy  it.  For  reasons  too  tedious  to  detail,  I 
could,  under  no  considerations,  think  of  comply- 
ing with  your  request,  except  on  condition  that 
ifly  communication  should  in  no  wise  become 
public  while  I  Hve,  and  the  war  continues.  This, 
as  a  matter  of  course,  would  rob  my  narrative  of 
its  imaginary  charms  of  anticipated  fascination 
for  you.  For  your  family,  means  for  the  public. 
For  either  you  or  your  family  the  only  interest  an 
account  of  my  little  servicescould  have  would  be  in 
their  public  discussion  and  criticism  among  your 
friends;  and  you  may  rest  assured  that  in  this  you 
would  be  sadly  disappointed. 

"  If  it  would  be  a  source  of  pleasure  to  you  and 
your  friends,  I  should  be  under  the  stern  necessity 
of  not  thus  contributing  to  innocent  diversion. 

"Craving  your  pardon  for  my  tardy  response, 
and  for  my  apparently  obstinate  and  ungallant  con- 
duct in  this  connection, 

"I  am,  very  respectfully, 

"Garland  Cloud." 


Cloud  deemed  this  the  end  of  the  discussion ; 
yet  the  following  reply  was  promptly  received: 

"Glendale,  Va.,  December,  1861. 
"Mr.  Garland  Cloud  . 

"  Aly  Esteemed  Friend: 
"Your  much  appreciated  letter  has  been  read 
with  deep  interest.     In  reply,  I  beg  to  say  tHat  if 


your  objections  rested  on  a  substantial  foundation, 
they  would  be  unanswerable;  but  1  assure  you 
that  in  the  main  they  are  utterly  imaginary  and 
groundless. 

"No  one  in  this  community  dreams  that  I  have 
written  to  or  received  a  line  from  yoii — not  even 
father  or  Edgar.  This  remains  my  secret.  Now 
Avhat  of  your  fears  that  your  denied  communica- 
tion would  be  paraded  before  the  public  ?  I  am 
too  selfish  for  that,  should  your  generosity  prompt 
you  to  confide  the  coveted  boon  to  my  care. 

"  I  wrote  in  the  name  of  the  family,  on  the  score 
of  gratitude,  because  I  reflected  the  famil}^  senti- 
ment. I  made  my  oft-repeated  request  in  the 
family  name  because  I  deemed  that  would  have 
more  weight;  and  you  have  as  repeatedly  de- 
clined to  entertain  that  strong  petition.  I  dared 
not  make  the  request  in  my  own  name  alone,  be- 
cause I  feared  you  would  not  Avaste  the  time  and 
take  the  trouble  merely  to  interest  one  little  girl. 
I  am,  however,  driven  to  the  extremity  of  chang- 
ing my  tactics.  I  now  make  the  request  anew 
for  myself  alone,  and  make  it  to  the  gallantr}-  of  a 
soldier  and  the  chivalrj^  of  a  Virginian. 

"  Can  these  refuse  to  gratify  the  simple  whim  of 
a  simpler  girl?  I  have  set  my  heart  on  obtaining 
this  romance  of  the  Border,  and  if  you  could 
realize  how  acutely  continued  disappointment 
pains  me,  you  would  not  withhold  the  hoped-for 
narration. 

"I  noAv  rest  my  petition  before  the  highest 
tribunal  to  which  I  can  carry  it,  and  I  entreat  you 
to  grant  it,  and  pledge  my  earnest  assurance  that 
no  eye  but  mine  shall  read  one  word,  and  that  not 
one  syllable  of  its  contents  shall  escape  the  lips 
of  your  expectant  friend  "Carrie." 


This  letter  was  overwhelming.  Cloud  was 
driven  from  his  position  of  defense,  and  surren- 
dered as  follows : 

"Army  OF  Northern  Va.,  Christmas  Day,  1801. 
"Miss  Carrie  V.  Harman. 

^'■Esteemed  Friend : 

"  Your  late  letter  was  I'ead  with  care  and 
appreciation.  Since  you  so  much  desire  a  com- 
munication relative  to  our  well-controverted 
subject,    which    it    appears    you    have    won  — 


30 


MYSTIC  KOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


whether  fairly  or  not,  and  which  I  have  de- 
cided to  attempt,  with  the  comphments  of  the 
season. 

"  There  is  nothing  strange  nor  mysterious  about 
my  assignment  to  the  duties  which  I  have  par- 
tially fulfilled  for  the  past  few  months,  unless  it 
be  the  silence  I  have  strictly  maintained  up  to 
this  moment  with  every  one  except  the  officers 
to  whom  it  was  my  duty  to  report,  and  the  con- 
trolling hand  of  Destiny.  This  service  was  but 
a  part  of  my  allotted  role ;  hence,  naturally,  I 
applied  for,  and  was,  therefore,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  to  it  assigned. 

"The  prevalent  notions  that  this  service  between 
the  lines  of  the  two  armies,  and  often  inside 
those  of  the  enemy,  is  peculiarly  dangerous  and 
wonderfully  exciting,  is  altogether  erroneous. 
There  are  few  posts  of  duty  Avhere  the  soldier 
should,  under  all  circumstances,  so  rigidly  shun 
the  companionship  of  excitement,  and  there  is 
no  other  post  so  securely  exempt  from  danger  as 
this  in  which  I  serve.  Cool,  cautious  and  pru- 
dent at  all  times,  one  may  be  comparatively  safe 
from  harm,  except  on  some  extraordinary  occa- 
sions. Excited,  reckless  and  rash,  his  liberty  or 
his  life  is  hourly  in  jeopardy.  In  five  months 
I  have  not  fired  a  shot  nor  had  one  fired  at  me, 
the  popular  stories  that  I  have  killed  a  number 
of  men,  whose  horses  and  arms  I  have  brought 
in,  to  the  contrary,  notwithstanding.  To  ac- 
count for  this  is  easy.  I  dare  not  shoot  unless  un- 
expectedly attacked,  and  forced  to  defend  myself 
as  a  last  desperate  resort,  because  this  would 
attract  attention  and  draw  around  me  additional 
dangers.  I  am  always  on  the  alert.  The  enemy 
is  rarely  ever  looking  for  me  where  I  might  be 
found.  When  I  challenge  one  to  surrender,  I  am 
quite  sure  he  is  not  near  friends.  He  is  off  his 
guard,  and  certain  to  surrender  before  he  re- 
covers from  his  surprise.  Nine  times  out  of  ten, 
perhaps,  the  man  would  not  surrender,  if  he  was 
expecting,  or  even  in  a  locality  where  he  was 
likely  to  meet,  an  enemy.  In  addition  to  other 
considerations  I  should  regard  it  cold-blooded 
murder  to  waylay  and  shoot  a  straggling  soldier 
not  on  duty,  inside  of  his  own  lines,  unprepared 
to  meet  an  unexpected  danger. 

"The  service  in  which  I  am  engaged  is  thor- 


oughly organized,  and  performed  almost  entirely 
by  civilians,  chiefly  ladies  and  colored  people 
inside  of  the  enemy's  lines.  I  am  a  very  insig- 
nificant factor,  expected  to  render  the  more 
dangerous  duties  that  connect  this  important 
bureau  with  the  regular  service  of  the  army ;  and 
I  am  by  no  means  the  only  nor  the  most  im- 
portant soldier  thus  employed.  There  are  scores 
of  them  along  the  front. 

"  There  are  regularly  established  and  well  de- 
fined signals  employed  both  day  and  night,  but 
understood  by  none  not  members  of  the  secret- 
service  society;  and  there  are  channels  for  trans- 
mitting information  from  point  to  point,  so  skill- 
fully planned  as  to  defy  detection,  but  never  so 
as  to  arouse  suspicion. 

"Some  of  these  signals  and  methods  of  com- 
munication are  very  common-place,  simple  and 
meaningless  to  persons  ignorant  of  their  purport, 
and  unacquainted  with  the  arrangement  with 
which  they  are  connected. 

"  One  blind  of  a  certain  window  open ;  both 
open;  both  closed;  the  end  of  a  red  curtain 
hanging  out  of  the  window ;  the  end  of  a  blue 
curtain ;  the  end  of  a  yellow  curtain,  or  the  end 
of  a  white  curtain — each  has  its  special  meaning, 
and  tells  as  much  miles  away  as  a  page  of  note- 
paper  would  contain.  Two,  three,  or  more  of 
these  tell  a  separate  and  different  story,  accord- 
ing to  their  arrangement.  These  are  day-signals. 
Night-signals  are  various  arrangements  of  lights 
burning  in  windows  with  both  curtains  up ;  both 
curtains  down ;  one  curtain  down^each  tells  its 
simple  or  compound  story.  About  forty  differ- 
ent ways  to  conceal  letters  passing  from  house  to 
house  or  between  neighborhoods,  so  that  the 
carriers  do  not  know  that  they  are  bearers  of 
communications,  have  been  invented.  The  bear- 
ers are  mostly  little  darkeys  sent  on  some  other 
trivial  errand  of  a  very  different  nature. 

"I  cannot  define  all  these  things,  because  obli- 
gations to  duty  will  not  permit. 

"  An  ancient  colored  man  is  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant personages  connected  with  this  service, 
and  is,  in  some  relation,  an  almost  indispensable 
assistant  in  everything  attempted  of  any  special 
importance.  Some  of  the  most  zealous  and  active 
members  and  agents  of  this  organization  are  the 


BEYOND  THE   OUTPOSTS. 


31 


fairest  and  the  most  accomplished  ladies  in  the 
land.  To  them  is  due  much  credit,  which  circum- 
stances, and  the  delicate  and  peculiar  situation 
which  they  occupy,  preclude  them  from  enjoying ; 
because  was  their  position  known,  many  would 
very  quickly  be  in  Northern  prisons. 

"  But  for  this,  some  of  them  would  not  hesitate 
to  use  the  revolver  or  the  carbine.  Each  lady 
connected  with  this  secret  border-service  is 
worth  more  to  the  army  than  ten  soldiers  in  the 
held.  These  fair  ladies  are  cool,  shrewd,  and 
heart  and  soul  devoted  to  the  cause.  There  is  no 
hardship  too  great  for  them  to  endure  without 
a  murmur ;  and  some  have  already  made  great 
sacrifices. 

"  Thousands  and  thousands  of  others  all  over 
the  land,  would  do  the  same  if  they  had  the  op- 
portunity. God  spare  them  such  opportunities 
where  the  pall  of  destruction  and  death  hovers 
and  grows  daily  thicker  and  blacker.  These 
ladies  have  fathers,  husbands,  brothers  and  sweet- 
hearts in  the  Confederate  army  or  in  Confederate 
graves ;  some  of  them  wear  the  deep,  sable  em- 
blems of  mourning. 

"  Often  I  carry  letters  back  and  forth  through 
the  lines.  From  this  fact,  you  may  imagine  that 
I  am  popular  with  the  soldiers  and  their  lady- 
loves. Expectation  is  on  tip-toe,  anxiously  await- 
ing my  return  as  the  time  approaches,  has  ar- 
rived, or  is  past,  when  what  they  jestingly  term 
the  underground  mail  is  due  from  the  army. 

"Such  are  about  the  arrangement,  the  nature 
and  the  relation  of  parties  to  one  another  in  this 
service. 

"The  first  adventure  in  my  experience  worth 
relating  was  Avith  a  young  captain  of  Federal 
cavalry.  This  young  gallant  persistently  and 
assiduously  endeavored  to  pay  special  attention 
to  a  young  lady  member  of  the  secret-service 
league,— an  organization  not  designed  to  provide 
pleasing  pastime  for  gentlemen  of  his  class. 
Naturall)^,  therefore,  it  was  not  in  the  harmony 
of  things  for  her  to  league  with  him.  Indeed,  this 
rather  prepossessing,  extra-stylish  individual  was 
actually  obnoxious  to  the  fair  object  of  his 
whimsical  adoration.  While  he  was  innocently 
indulging  in  dreams  of  Elysian  rapture,  and  con- 
templating the  blissful  ecstasies  of  love,  the  un- 


reciprocating,  unappreciative  little  rebel  lady  was 
actually  plotting  his  discomfiture  and  undoing : 
designing  to  rid  herself  at  one  fell  and  cruel 
stroke,  eftectually  and  permanently  of  his  society. 
Perhaps  too,  she  desired  to  test  the  efficient  util- 
ity of  her  league  in  cases  of  emergency.  In  her 
opinion,  so  far  as  she  was  personally  concerned 
in  the  person  of  the  ill-starred  captain,  the  emer- 
gency had  arrived.  She  knew  what  evenings  to 
expect  him. 

"I  was  duly  posted  and  advised  of  the  part  she 
expected  me  to  play.  As  soon  as  it  was  dark, 
on  the  appointed  evening,  I  observed  that  none 
but  safety  signal-lights  were  burning. 

"The  parlor  designed  for  the  comic  scene  was 
brilliantly  illuminated.  The  young  lady  was 
seated  at  the  piano,  playing  with  harmonious 
cadence  the  stirring  notes,  and  singing  with  spell- 
binding melody — '  Dixie.' 

"  The  captain  stood  by  her,  turning  the  music,  his 
countenance  beaming  with  admiration  and  his 
heart  blazing  with  enthusiastic  delight  too  fierce 
to  last.  The  scene  was  one  well  calculated  to 
enthuse  a  classic  painter  with  an  ardent  desire 
to  catch  the  outlines,  in  order  to  reproduce  the 
picture  with  some  semblance  of  creation  ap- 
proaching the  impressive  reality. 

"As  stated,  the  young  man  in  appearance  was 
a  fair  Adonis.  But  at  the  present  moment  the 
tints  gf  nature  were  heightened  to  the  last  gleam 
of  perfection  to  which  the  fullness  of  earthly 
enjoyment  could  fire  them.  To  his  eye  and  en- 
chanted mind,  the  young  lady  was  an  unrivaled, 
an  unapproachable,  Venus.  Dressed  in  bright  and 
most  fascinating  summer  style,  her  long,  wavy, 
black  hair,  wreathed  with  flowers,  flowed  over 
her  shoulders  in  gentle  undulations,  as  it  was 
fanned  by  fragrant  zephyrs  laden  with  perfume — 
odors  sipped  from  the  balmy  nectar  of  a  soft 
summer  evening;  a  large  bunch  of  variegated 
rose-buds  was  pinned  to  her  heaving  bosom, 
almost  directly  over  the  strongly  palpitating 
heart;  her  eyes  flashed  and  sparkled  with  burn- 
ing witchery.  Never  before  had  the  captain 
found  her  so  courteously  civil,  so  studiously  po- 
lite, so  graciously  kind  and  pleasingly  conde- 
scending to  him.  Evidently  the  crisis  was  past, 
the  prejudice  was  vanishing,  and  the  prize  was 


32 


MYSTIC  ROMA^'CES  OF  THE  BLUE  AKD  THE  GREY. 


about  to  be  won  at  last.  Before  him  were  all 
the  silent  yet  eloquent  and  unmistakable  tokens 
the  blindly  infatuated  lover  could  wish — the 
heaving  bosom,  the  tell-tale  language  of  the 
love-lit  eye. 

"Ah!  could  he  but  have  divined  the  secret 
depths  of  these  charm-beguiling,  so  highly-prized 
tokens,  his  Cupid-seething  blood  would  have 
been  instantaneously  transformed  to  ice,  and 
ceased  to  flow  in  its  wonted  currents  through  his 
veins. 

"The  bland  and  winning  smiles  were  the  fair 
petals  of  the  delicate  rose  conceahng  a  treacher- 
ous bunch  of  sharp  and  cruel  thorns;  the  heaving 
bosom  was  the  suppressed  respiration  of  the  fierce 
and  crouching  lioness  about  to  launch  upon  her 
prey.  The  bright  and  sparkling  eye  was  but  the 
subtle  and  deadly  gleam  of  the  gazing  viper, 
ready  to  thrust  the  venomous  fangs  into  an 
unsuspecting  victim.  But  for  these  facts,  and 
these  alone,  it  would  have  been  gross  sacrilege  to 
break  in  upon  this  lovely  scene,  and  awaken  this 
dreamer  from  his  love-lulled  reverie. 

"I  stood  in  the  open  door  an  instant — perhaps 
two.  Then  in  a  clear,  sharp  voice  I  demanded 
the  Captain's  surrender  to  the  Confederate  Gov- 
ernment. To  this  he  offered  no  objection.  He 
Avas  not  armed.  One  little  instant  had  blighted  all 
the  brihiant  glow  of  his  cheek;  an  ashy  hue  now 
covered  his  features;  he  was  the  picture  of  de- 
spair. The  lady  uttered  a  subdued  scream,  then 
hurled  at  me  a  few  well-feigned  reproaches.  Two 
hours  later  the  Captain  was  turned  over  to  old 

Col.  J of,  G —   S — ,  much   crest-fallen    and 

dispirited.     I  told  Col.  J ,  in    the    Captain's 

presence,  that  it  was  only  after  a  desperate  strug- 
gle that  I  made  him  yield,  and  to  treat  him  as  a 
gallant  man.  I  made  a  mental  reservation  as  to 
the  true  character  of  the  struggle.  The  Captain 
used  this  clue  to  cover  his  shame,  and  created  the 
impression  that  he  fought  desperately ;  broke  his 
sword;  emptied  his  pistols  and  threw  them  at  my 
head  before  he  surrendered.  This  story  rapidly 
spread  and  grew  as  it  went.  It  was  to  the  inter- 
est of  the  young  lady  that  it  should  remain  un- 
contradicted, and  the  capture  of  her  hapless  tor- 
mentor be  disconnected  Avith  her  name  and  home. 

"  The  next  little  affair  included  five  officers  who 


were  disagreeably  attentive  to  as  many  J'oung 
ladies,  members  of  the  secret  organization,  or  to 
their  intimate  friends. 

"A  special  evening  party  was  arranged  for  the 
benefit  of  these  officers,  to  come  off  at  the  home 
of  one  of  the  young  ladies,  to  be  strictly  private 
and  entirely  unknown  to  friends  of  the  officers. 
At  this  the  officers  were  elated,  and  zealously 
treasured  the  secret  of  their  anticipated  enjoy- 
ment until  they  met  at  the  appointed  time  and 
place,  to  find  all  the  young  ladies  assembled  in 
the  parlor,  ready  to  extend  a  cordial  greeting  and 
an  assuring  welcome  to  their  guests.  They  were 
entertained  in  an  exceedingly  agreeable  manner 
with  songs,  music,  games,  conversation;  in  a  word, 
by  all  the  diverting  and  interesting  means  which 
the  minds  of  the  young  ladies,  so  fertile  in  re- 
sources and  imagination,  could  invent  to  make 
the  hours  glide  softlv,  pleasingly,  fascinatingly 
away. 

"Midnight  sounded  from  the  old,  deep-toned 
eight-day  clock  in  the  library. 

"One  minute  later  eleven  of  us,  apparently  un- 
bidden guests,  uncivillj',  unceremoniously  entered 
the  parlor,  without  saluting  even  the  ladies,  and 
rudely  introduced  ourselves  to  their  admirers, 
who  Avere  instantly  marched  rapidly  aAvay  as 
prisoners,  Avithout  time  for  complimentary  adieus. 
Long  before  daylight  they  wei-e  turned  over  to 

Col.  J .     Tavo  other  officers  fared  the  same 

Avay  afterward  under  similar  circumstances. 

"  What  stupid  presumption  in  these  people,  who 
come  Avith  a  sword  in  one  hand  and  a  torch  in  the 
other  to  slay  and  to  burn,  to  imagine  that  their 
society  could  be  agreeable  to  Southern  ladies ! 

"  Some  persons  are  so  uncharitable  as  to  impute 
to  this  class  of  Federal  officers  insincere  and  dis- 
honorable motives.  I  do  not  believe  this,  nor  do 
many  of  the  young  ladies  aa^io  are  annoyed  by 
such  suitors  believe  it,  AYhy  not?  Because  many 
such  volunteer  officers  are  mere  adventurers, 
without  property,  social  standing  or  even  envia- 
ble reputations  at  home,  and  certainly  they  Avould 
marry  the  beauty,  wealth,  and  social  station  they 
could  not  gain  Avhere  known.  This  Aveakness  is 
confined  almost  exclusively  to  the  volunteer  ser- 
vice, and  will  cost  many  their  liberty,  some  their 
lives. 


BEYOND  THE  OUTPOSTS. 


33 


"  West  Point  officers,  if  not  born  gentlemen,  are 
educated  soldiers;  and  the  first  and  most  essen- 
tial requisite  of  a  soldier  is,  that  he  shall  be  a 
gentleman.  Besides  being  contrary  to  the  car- 
dinal jirinciples  of  etiquette,  as  recognized  by  gen- 
tlemen all  over  the  world,  to  intrude  upon  the 
society  of  a  lady,  under  any  circumstances,  with- 
out an  introduction  secured  with  the  lady's  con- 
sent— and  then  not  without  her  permission,  nor 
even  with  this  if  reluctantly  accorded,  or  if  the 
society  is  manifestly  unwelcome  or  disagreeable 
to  the  lady — it  is  a  breach  of  discipline  sufficient 
to  disgrace  an  officer,  for  him  to  straggle  away 
from  his  command  on  such  errands,  and  almost 
in  the  very  presence  of  the  enemy.  For  these 
reasons,  regular  officers  will  rarely  expose  them- 
selves to  such  disastrous  dangers. 

"In  September  there  were  some  odd  little  in- 
cidents   down    in  front   of    Arlington    Heights. 

Colonels  E and  J were  both  there — two 

kindred  spirits,  very  like  in  appearance,  dress, 
speech,  even  to  the  peculiar  nasal  twang  and 
rather  whining  voice  and  profanity.  I  was  out 
Avith  them,  part  of  their  staffs  and  an  escort,  on 
an  expedition  of  reconnoissance  well  up  to  the 
front. 

"  Suddenly  our  party  was  unpleasantly  exposed 
to  the  fire  of  a  number  of  sharp-shooters.  As  the 
peculiarly  singing  balls  passed,  humming  their 
spiteful  mjisic  round  our  ears,  the  spectacle  our 
troop  presented  was  grotesque  and  ridiculous, 
produced  by  the  way  each  one  manifested  the 
effect  the  disagreeable  position  had  on  his  ner- 
vous system.  Some  dismounted  on  the  off  sides 
of  their  steeds ;  some  lay  flat  on  the  pommels  of 
their  saddles;  some  dodged  their  heads  back- 
wards; some  to  the  right  and  others  to  the  left; 
some  turned  deathly  pale  and  trembled  violently; 
and  the  faces  of  some  others  glowed  with  an 
unearthly  radiance. 

"  My  solemn  vow  made  to  my  native  and  Ise- 
loved  hills,  as  I  beheld  them  the  last  moment  in  the 
grey  twilight  of  that  memorable  morning  which 
you  have  not  forgotten,  when  the  emotion  of  a 
sister's  love  thrilled  your  soul,  and  the  torrents 
from  the  fathomless  wells  of  a  sister's  heart 
blinded  your  eyes  and  scalded  your  cheeks,  was 
never  to   dodge,  flinch  or   manifest  one  emotion 


of  fear ; — this  I  have  studied  and  practiced  until 
it  has  apparently  become  a  second  nature.  I  am 
much  supported  by  the  abiding  faith  that  if  I  am 
not  destined  to  perish  in  this  war,  no  deadly  aim 
can  lay  me  low,  and  that  if  dfestined  to  perish, 
no  precaution  can  save  me  from  the  fatal  mis- 
sile directed  by  the  finger  of  the  Destroying 
Angel;  for  on  the  fields  of  strife  and  carnage,  as 
well  as  everywhere  else  in  the  world,  both  the 
destroying  and  the  guardian  angels  are  present. 
For  this  reason,  which  is  unknown  to  every  one 
on  earth,  I  am  regarded  as  a  brave,  intrepid  lad, 
who  tosses  in  the  game  of  life  and  death  with 
contemptuous  indifference.  This  is  erroneous, 
because  my  natural  instinct  is  as  strong  as  that 
of  my  most  timid  comrade,  as  I  stand  on  its  mar- 
gin, to  shiver  at  the  prospect  of  a  plunge  into  the 
waters  of  the  dark  river. 

"I  watched  my  companions — either  one  of  whom 
would  have  gone  as  far  into  the  jaws  of  death 
and  remained  as  long  as  I— a  few  moments,  with  a 
half  unconscious  smile  on  my  lips,  then  slyly 
turned  my  eye  on  the  two  old  veterans  who  were 
a  few  paces  from  the  other  members  of  their 
party,  appearing,  talking  and  swearing  the  same 
as  before  they  left  camp,  paying  far  less  atten- 
tion to  the  flying  bullets  than  they  would  have 
done  to  the  same  number  of  mad  hornets. 

"I heard  my  name  mentioned.  Col.  E said: 

"'Oh!  he  got  tempered  in  the  sharp-shoot's 
work  up  around  the  old  Henry  house  on  the  21st 
of  July.' 

'"Yes,  and  case-hardened  outside  of  the  lines 

since,'  was  Col.  J 's  reply. 

"Col.  E then  turned  abruptly  toward  me, 

and  said  : 

"'Cloud,  why  in  the  don't  you  dodge? 

You  are  just  as  'fraid  of  these  singers  as  I  am, 
and  they  would  hurt  you  worse  than  me,  because 
you  are  tenderer.' 

"  'I  want  to  dodge  very  bad.  Colonel,  but  am 
afraid,'  I  answered. 

"  'That  is  a of  an  idea.    Explain  yourself, 

young  man,'  he  said. 

"  'I  am  afraid  that  I  might  dodge  in  the  way, 
and  also  that  those  fellows  would  see  me,  know 
they  are  striking  close,  and  improve  their  aim,' 
I  replied. 


34 


MYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GKEY. 


'"That  will  do,  Cloud.  Next  witness  come 
forward,'  was  his  ejaculation. 

"  While  writing  of  Col.  E ,  I  must  tell  you 

about  an  incident  that  occurred  between  him  and 

our  Corporal  E ,  whom  you  know  very  well, 

the  night  I  relieved  your  brother  from  guard  duty. 

"My  post  was  next  to   the  Colonel's  quarters. 

Charles  J was  in  front  of  them.     Col.  E 

had  been  away,  and  returned  during  the  mid- 
night watch.  There  was  some  hitch  in  the  coun- 
tersign ;  he  could  not  pass  the  guard,  and  ordered 
the  corporal  called. 

"Corporal  E appeared,  but  the  matter  was 

not  mended. 

"  'To  what  company  do  you  belong,  corporal?' 
the  Colonel  inquired. 

"  'Captain  J -'s,'  was  the  reply. 

" '  Corporal,'  hissed  the  Colonel,  with  merciless 

sarcasm,  '  go  and  tell  Captain  J to  send  me  a 

corporal  who  has  got  some  sense ;'  and  the  old 
man  waited  until  all  was  right. 

"  Then  we  rode  on,  and  soon  passed  behind  a 
skirt  of  timber  to  a  high  point  in  the  road,  where 
there  was  a  carriage-house  in  the  centre  of  a 
wagon-yard.  From  this  point  we  could  see  a 
body  of  cavalry  coming  from  the  direction  of 
Georgetown,  evidently  bent  on  our  capture. 

"  In  about  a  minute  Col.  E had  two  pieces 

of  old  stove  pipe  mounted  on  and  lashed  to  the 
axles  of  two  carts,  and  these  rapidly  rushed  to 
the  middle  of  the  road;  the  whole  party  at  the 
same  time  raised  a  vociferous  cheer. 

''  The  troopers  hearing  this,  and  seeing  wheels 
with  their  dark  and  threatening-mouthed  bur- 
dens pointing  down  the  road,  and  men  standing 
in  position,  as  if  waiting  for  the  command  to  fire, 
turned  and  fled  percipitately. 

"  Pretty  soon  a  balloon  cautiously  rose  above 
the  tree-tops  at  no  great  distance  from  us,  paused 
an  instant,  and  then  went  suddenly  down. 

"  We  did  not  have  business  to  detain  us  in  that 
vicinity  very  much  longer,  and  soon  hastened 
back  to  the  main  body  of  our  command. 

"The  night  following  these  incidents,  several 
regiments  of  as  fine  infantry  as  any  in  the  army, 
were  badly  stampeded  by  a  sudden  alarm,  which 
awoke  the  men,  under  the  conviction  that  a 
division  of  Federal  cavalry  was  in  their  midst. 


"All  this  disturbance  was  caused  by  about 
twenty  horses  that  had  been  tied  to  one  side  of 
the  fence  which  surrounded  a  neighboi-ing  man- 
sion, breaking  the  plank  fence  down,  and  rftnning 
with  it  dragging  after  them  into  the  grove  where 
the  infantry  was  sleeping.  For  a  few-  moments 
the  noise  was  terrific.  Just  then  one  hundred 
good  troopers  could  have  completely  annihilated 
this  fine  brigade.  In  ten  minutes,  however,  all 
was  quiet  again ;  and  the  men  lay  down  to  sleep 
with  as  little  concern  as  though  they  had  just 
been  to  roll-call. 

"  I  have  captured  several  couriers,  officers  and 
stragglers,  in  out-of-the-way  places,  usually  where 
duty  did  not  require  their  presence.  Not  one  of 
them  attempted  to  resist.  Two  or  three  times  I 
have  challenged  a  plucky  chap,  who  turned  his 
superb  steed,  and  fled  in  admirable  style;  from 
this  I  fancy  I  have  learned  a  valuable  lesson — 
one  that  may  sometime  be  of  inestimable  service 
to  me.  I  have  been  in  some  pretty  close  places, 
by  this  cool  fellow  returni-ng  with  a  squad  of 
troopers  to  hunt  me.  But  my  old  colored  friend 
is  usuaLy  near,  and  sends  them  off  on  a  wild- 
goose  chase,  that  enables  me  to  get  to  a  place  of 
safety. 

"I  have  sleeping-  and  hiding-places,  that  would 
be  as  hard  to  find  as  the  most  cunning  fox's  den. 
The  timbered  districts,  deep  ravines,  and  long 
lines  of  fences,  make  it  both  easy  to  hide  and  com- 
paratively safe  to  travel  long  distances,  even  in 
day-light,  inside  of  the  enemy's  picket  lines. 

"Now  you  have  this  marvelous  and  romantic 
story,  and  feel  di"sappointed.  It  is  very  much 
like  anything  else  in  this  world,  when  we  exchange 
the  imaginary  shadow  for  the  reality :  wonderful 
as  obscure  mysteries:  contemptible  nothings  as 
familiar  acquaintances. 

"But  permit  me  to  call  your  attention  to  some- 
thing more  serious  and  unromantically  real. 

"In  the  early  spring-time,  before  'the  purple 
lilacs  blossom,'  this  service  and  these  scenes  will 
be  no  more.  Do  you  want  to  know  why  ?  Yes. 
The  North  is  collecting  and  training  a  powerful 
army.  Often  I  am  able  to  see  vast  legions  of 
them  drilling,  and  to  hear  the  swelling  strains 
of  their  music  away  m  localities  which  the  eye 
cannot  survey. 


BEYOND  THE  OUTPOSTS. 


35 


"Ere  long  I  must  take  my  place  in  the  ranks, 
juid  live  or  cease  to  live  in  the  iron  and  leaden 
hurricane,  rushing  on  to  the  cannon's  blazing,  bel- 
lowing, deadly  mouth. 

"  In  fancy  I  see,  or  seem  to  see,  you  shudder  as 
you  think  of  your  only  brother.  It  is  well.  The 
(lark  storm  will  burst  in  all  its  fury  around  his 
head  amid  shadows  of  the  Death  Angel's  wing. 
Pray  for  him.  Virginia,  our  mother,  says,  'My 
sons,  I  demand  this;'  and  we  must  obey. 

"Should  you  by  mischance  hear  that  I  had  been 
permitted  to  render  any  service,  such  as  erroneous 
judgment  sometimes  terms  conspicuous,  pray  at- 
tribute it  to  its  proper  source.  To  Garland  Cloud  ? 
No,  indeed !  but  to  the  spirit  inhabiting  that  poor 
tenement  of  mountain  clay.  It  is  the  spirit's 
fire  aroused  that  blazes  and  leaves  on  mankind 
the  i-mprint  of  heroism  and  immortal  renovi^n. 
As  the  cold  and  inanimate  locomotive  is  warmed 
to  throbbing  pulsation  by  its  life-breathing  steam, 
so  the  body  of  man  becomes  electrified  by  the 
spirit's  subtle  current,  and  under  the  spell  of  that 
potent  influence  performs  prodigies  of  heroic  valor 
Avhich  flesh  and  blood  are  as  incapable  of  accom- 
plishing as  the  engine  would  be  of  fulfilling  its 
gigantic  task  without  steam.  It  is  this  defiant 
spirit  that  fears  no  death,  and  renders  the  body 
insensible  to  pain  until  after  reaction  causes  the 
spirit  to  subside  back  to  the  normal  condition  of 
nature,  that  makes  heroes. 

"  I  saw  Beauregard  and  Jackson  near  Stone 
Bridge,  on  that  July  Sabbath,  when  their  natural 
faculties  were  as  dead  as  those  ot  poor  Bee  and 
Bartow,  while  their  spirits  wielded  the  sway  in 
triumphant  grandeur.  There  was  the  grand  in 
soul  displayed  in  matchless  majesty. 

"But  of  all  the  towering  monuments  of  living 
heroism  and  unpretentious,  unselfish  devotion  that 
I  have  yet  seen  or  ever  expect  to  see,  was  the  one 
by  my  side  on  sharp-shooting  duty,  through  the 
long  and  trying  hours  of  that  fearful  Sabbath. 
Tl-iis  was  a  delicate,  pale-faced,  frail  little  boy, 
apparently  vv''ithout  strength  sufficient  to  hold  up 
a  rifle  at  a  steady  aim,  a  member  of  another 
regiment,  but  thrown  by  my  side  in  closing  up 
after  crossing  some  broken  ground. 

"  His  pale  face  glowed,  from  the  instant  he  deliv- 
ered his  first  round  up  to  the  moment  when  his 


last  one  was  fired,  as  the  crimson  cheeks  of  a 
blushing  girl.  He  loaded  and  fired  with  a  rapid- 
ity and  deliberation  that  was  astonishing.  Once 
his  gun-barrel  became  so  hot  he  could  not  handle 
it.  He  threw  it  down,  walked  ten  paces,  and 
picked  up  another  from  the  side  of  a  dead  com- 
rade. Twice  his  ammunition  was  gone ;  as  often 
he  supplied  it  from  the  boxes  of  dead  men.  At 
one  time, when  actually  mixed  up  with  the  enemy, 
defending  a  battery,  and  they  recoiled  a  Uttle,  he 
snatched  two  loaded  navy  pistols  from  the  belt 
of  a  dead  trooper;  threw  his  gun-strap  over  his 
own  Tiead ;  stuck  one  pistol  under  his  cartridge- 
box  belt;  took  the  other  in  his  left  hand;  with  his 
right  hand  drew  the  same  dead  trooper's  sabre 
from  its  scabbard ;  discharged  the  pistol  rapidly  ; 
threw  it  down ;  discharged  the  other;  cast  it  aside; 
made  some  incredible  strokes  with  the  sabre  that 
brought  blood,  and  when  tlie  enemy  were  out 
of  reach  threw  down  his  sabre  and  resumed  his 
rifle. 

"After  this  there  Vv'as  a  momentary  lull.  I  said 
to  him,  'My  brave  friend,  you  expose  yourself 
too  much;  they  will  kill  you.'  'I  am  not  afraid; 
God  will  take  care  of  me,'  was  the  modest  and 
blushing  reply. 

"You  want  to  know  this  lad?  A  son  of  some  old 
and  chivalric  family  of  the  highest  order  of  aris- 
tocracy, you  are  fancying.  You  are  mistaken  as 
to  the  present.  Of  his  ancestors  I  have  learned 
nothing.  He  is  a  simple  child  of  nature — of  the 
mountains.  His  name  is  Jesse  Flowers.  His 
widowed  mother  and  little  sister  live  alone,  per- 
haps almost  friendless,  in  a  little  cabin  on  the 
southern  steeps  of  Beaver  Mountain,  within  one 
dozen  miles  of  your  father's  mansion.  Such  is 
the  partial  pedigree  of  a  living  young  hero,  to 
equal  anything  you  can  find  painted  on  canvas 
or  the  '  pictured  page '  of  fairy  tale — this  mas- 
terful sublimity  of  spiritual  heroism.  Of  such 
material  are  the  great  martial  heroes  made. 

"  With  no  officer  near  to  encourage  and  inspire 
him ;  no  eye  gazing  on  in  admiration  for,  him  to 
seek  to  please;  no  approving  voice  to  stimulate 
him  to  superhuman  exertions  ten  times  greater 
than  his  natural  force  could  endure,  the  grand 
spirit  of  simple,  fearless  duty  rose  in  this  child  of 
the  mountain  forest,  and  transformed  him  into  a 


3G 


I\IYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


young  giant,  raging  and  reveling  in  the  destroy- 
ing tempest  of  battle,  almost  rivaling  the  imaged 
Hector  of  fabled  Tro3^  The  magic  of  his  exam- 
ple led  me  on,  or  held  me  spell-bound  throughout 
the  wildest  scenes  of  that  bloody  drama. 

"You  may  sigh  because  you  cannot  emulate 
my  fair  companions  in  the  secret  service  of  the 
border  in  direct  aid  to  our  beautiful,  our  beloved, 
your  own  Virginia. 

"  But,  my  friend,  you  may  rival — yes,  far  out- 
strip them.  How  ?  By  organizing  a  little  society  of 
your  own  to  provide  for  the  destitute  families  of 
our  mountain  soldiers  in  their  cheerless,  desolate, 
want-threatened  homes,  which  are  scattered  all 
around  your  beautiful  valley.  Levy  contributions 
on  our  ^stay-at-home  gentry'  without  mercy. 

"By  doing  this  you  will  inspire  hundreds  of  sol- 
diers with  redoubled  courage  and  determination. 
They  Avould  then  rush  onto  the  thundering  bat- 
tery with  the  consoling  thought  in  their  minds 
and  the  inaudible  words  on  their  lips : 

'"If  I  fall,  Carrie  Harman,  the  angel  of  conso- 
lation will  not  allow  my  wife  and  babes  to  suf- 
fer.' Then  the  devoted  breasts  would  be  bared  to 
the  storm  of  death  with  cheerful,  unmurmuring 
resignation. 

"Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  when  the  gloomy  ti- 
dings come  that  the  loved  ones  at  home  are  suffer- 
ing, these  hardy  mountaineers  will  say:  'We 
have  nothing  more  to  fight  for :  the  rich  are  let- 
ting our  babes  starve ;  we  will  go  and  care  for 
them  or  die  in  the  attempt.' 

"  What  a  frightful  demoralization  this  would 
soon  create !  By  preventing  in  your  section  what 
must  cause  it,  you  will  render  finer  and  more  mer- 
itorious service  to  the  countrj  than  it  is  possible 
for  two  of  our  best  companies  to  perform  in  the 
field.  I  know  these  poor  men  of -the  mountain, 
and  tell  you  what  would  happen. 

"  You  have  earnestly  protested  that  you  desire 
an  opportunity  substantially  to  manifest  the  grati- 
tude you  claim  to  owe  me. 

"I  entreat  you,  then,  the  first  thing  you  do,  to 
see  that  the  mother  and  little  sister  of  Jesse 
Flowers  are  not  suffering.  There  is  nothing  else 
in  your  power  to  do  that  I  would  appreciate  so 
much.  The  poor  boy  has  such  simple,  implicit 
faith  that  God  will  not  let  his  mother  and  '  sissie ' 


suffer,  that  I  do  hope  he  may  not  be  disappointed. 
My  friends  on  the  border  have  sent  him  little 
presents.  He  believes  God  told  them  about  him. 
I  wish  you  could  see  him  then.  What  sublime 
manifestations  of  gratitude ! 

"  I  tell  you  about  this  boy  because  I  alone  am 
his  witness.  At  one  time  he  had  nine  witnesses 
who  were  cheered  on  for  an  hour — some  of  them 
more — and  encouraged  by  his  cool  intrepidity. 
You  are  wondering  why  I  am  his  only  witness 
now.  Eight  of  the  nine  are  dead.  When  the 
firing  ceased  and  the  smoke  cleared  away,  we 
found  them  all,  their  fair  young  faces  cold  and 
rigid,  resting  on  the  bloody  ground  around  the 
spot  where  that  desperate  hand-to-hand  struggle 
had  swayed  back  and  forth  so  long  over  that 
fiercely  contested  battery. 

"I  want  you  to  tell  his  old  mother  and  little 
sister  about  him,  in  that  graphic,  impressive  lan- 
guage that  is  so  natural  to  you.  They  will  be 
proud  of  him.  Ah !  yes ;  and  a  queen  might  well 
be  proud  of  him.  And  some  morning, when  a 
dark  shadow  crosses  that  humble  threshold,  and 
in  pitiless  accents  tells  the  poor  widowed  mother 
and  the  little  orphan  sister  that  little  Jesse  Flow- 
ers, the  son  and  the  brother,  their  hope  and  their 
all,  has  died  nobly,  right  up  at  the  cannon's 
mouth,  it  will  then,  after  their  wail  of  despair  has 
subsided,  and  the  settled  melancholy  of  a  hope- 
less resignation  has  imprinted  its  cruel  seal  upon 
their  features,  be  a  comfort  to  them  to  recall  that 
'  the  aristocratic  but  real  lady,  who  was  not  a 
bit  scornful,  but  was  so  kind,  so  gentle,  so  good, 
had  praised  him.' 

"I  must  draw  this  letter,  that  has  rambled  so 
much,  to  a  close. 

"  I  have  not  sought  to  amuse, but  to  interest  you. 
Yes,  to  interest  you  in  the  cause  of  our  common 
country  and  of  humanity;  not  only  to  interest, 
but  also  to  enlist,  your  heart  and  your  soul  in 
these  potent  causes  which  at  this  time  are  one 
and  inseparable.  I  have  been  bold  and  fearless  in 
my  appeals.  But  my  religion  now  is*  to  serve  my 
country.  I  do  not  hesitate  nor  stand  on  cere- 
monies when  I  see  an  opportunity,  no  matter  in 
what  direction  it  may  lead,  to  service. 

"If  worthy  of  your  attention,  I  shalll^e  much 
pleased  at  any  time  to  hear  from  you,  and  to  learn 


THE  PICKET  BIVOUAC. 


37 


how  far,  if  at  all,  I  have  succeeded  in  enlisting 
your  sympathies  and  interest  in  the  direction 
indicated.  ^ 

"Your  encomiums  have  encouraged  me  and 
caused  me  to  resolve  to  strive  harder,  to  render 
some  service  in  the  future  more  vv^orthy  the  kind 
approbation  of  my  friends  and  of  my  country. 
But,  alas !  my  extreme  youth  and  my  obscurity 
are  obstacles  in  my  way,  that  appear  insurmount- 
able, and  render  the  prospect  of  success  desper- 
ately discouraging. 

"Your  humble  friend, 

"Garland  Cloud." 


Such  was  the  letter  of  the  scout,  the  obscure 
mountain-boy,  to  the  aristocratic  belle.  No 
dreams  of  love  vexed  that  youthful  mind.  It 
is  transcribed  verbatim  from  a  copy  furnished 
by  the  lady  herself,  in  her  own  hand,  and 
copied  from  the  original,  which  is  in  her  pos- 
session. How  much  she  has  modified  the  phrase- 
ology Ave  have  no  means  of  knowing.  We  have 
her  assurance  that  the  copy  is  a  faithful  one. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE      PICKET      BIVOUAC. 

"  The  Are  smoldered  low  and  dim, 
The  wind  hlew  bleak  and  chill." 

This  is  a  subject  of  interest  to  troops  m  the 
field. 

Upon  the  lonely  sentinel,  who  is  posted  from 
the  picket  bivouac,  often  depends  the  safety  of 
not  only  his  immediate  companions  of  the  re- 
serve, but  of  the  whole  army.  His  duties 
are  stupendous,  and  his  powers  so  despotic  that 
his  commanding  general  dare  not  trench  upon 
them  without  conforming  with  prescribed  rules. 
Such  commander,  although  he  may  be  intimately 
known  to  the  sentry,  dare  not  attempt  to  cross  the 
picket-post  without  the  countersign.  Should 
he  presume  thus  to  attempt  to  pass  the  lines, 
it  would  be  at  the  peril  of  his  life.  Military  law 
confers  upon  the  picket  the  absolute  power  to 
arrest  and  detain  his  commander,  under  such 
circumstances,  or  even  to  shoot  him,  should  he 
disregard  the  sentry's  authority  and  attempt  to 
escape.     Hence  tiie  importance  of  the  duties  of 


the  picket  are  rarely  properly  estimated  and  duly 
appreciated  by  people  outside  of  the  circle  of 
educated  or  experienced  military  men. 

The  soldier  on  picket  duty  stands  on  the  altar 
of  his  country,  whose  fires  incessantly  burn,  a 
sacrifice  ready  to  be  offered  up  at  any  moment. 
He  must  ignore  self — remember  duty.  Personal 
danger  and  self-preservation  must  not  be  an  in- 
fluence to  actuate  him  to  abandon  his  post,  or 
seek  to  save  his  life  at  the  peril  of  his  trust. 
Although  he  be  surrounded  by  menacing'foemen, 
with  leveled  muskets,  drawn  pistols,  and  flashing 
sabres,  the  picket-sentry  must  discharge  his  gun 
— sound  the  tocsin  of  alarm,  to  warn  his  com- 
rades of  approaching  danger — in  the  very  face  of 
instantaneous  death. 

This  is  his  duty.  Of  him  no  less  is  expected. 
Upon  his  faithful  discharge  of  this  obligation 
the  army  implicitly  relies.  Thus  assured  that 
they  are  safely  protected  against  the  dangers  of 
a  surprise,  the  commanders  and  soldiers  sleep  in 
confiding  security.  * 

Into  the  soldier's  being  is  this  wondrous  duty, 
with  the  dependencies  it  shields,  energetically 
inculcated  from  his  first  day  of  service,  and  con- 
stantly continued  until  he  is  graduated  in  the 
important  routines  of  a  private  warrior. 

Upon  his  superior  authority  as  a  picket-sentry, 
the  young  soldier  early  learns  to  pride  himself. 
Of  his  supreme  prerogative  he  becomes  intensely 
jealous. 

From  the  earliest  historical,  and  even  legend- 
ary ages,  we  have  the  grand  pictures  of  individ- 
ual heroism — standing  out  in  bold  and  unri- 
valed relief — drawn  from  the  sentry  on  duty, 
standing  and  perishing,  without  flinching  or  re- 
coiling, at  his  post.  Some  few  of  their  names 
have  been  immortalized  in  song  and  in  portraits 
on  History's  "pictured  page." 

Of  many  others  equally  grand  the  world  has 
never  heard — not  even  their  companions  of  the 
day  knew  more  of  their  story  than  that  they  sent 
the  sharp  notes  of  warning  back  to  the  reserves 
to  prepare  for  danger,  and  then  died.  Their 
names  went  on  the  fists  of  "missing"  or  "killed," 
on  the  muster-rolls,  and  thus  passed  away. 

In  our  Civil  War,  many  cases  of  grand  individ- 
ual heroism,  on  both  sides,  might  have   been  re- 


38 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


corded,  portrayed  and  sung;  yet  few  have  been 
given  to  the  world. 

The  most  pathetic  picture  of  this  theme  now 
extant,  so  far  as  we  know,  is  to  be  found  in  the 
poem,  written  by  a  Confederate  trooper,  "All 
quiet  along  the  Potomac  to-night ; "  but  no 
names  are  mentioned. 

There  has  been  a  case  recorded  in  the  columns 
of  the  Detroit  Free  Press,  over  the  no7n  de  j^lume 
of  M.  Quad,  of  a  Federal  sergeant  of  the  guard, 
in  a  fort  in  front  of  Petersburg,  surprised  and 
entered  by  the  Confederates,  before  daylight,  in 
the  early  months  of  1865. 

This  soldier  continued  to  fire  after  he  had  been 
repeatedly  wounded ;  and  to  his  coolness,  intre- 
pidity and  courage,  was  the  failure  of  the  Con- 
federates largely  due. 

No  one  of  our  characters,  unfortunately,  ever 
seized  the  crown  of  this  matchless  heroism  in  the 
destroying  prosecution  of  war. 

The  armies  of  Northern  Virginia  and  the  Po- 
tomac* picketed  by  brigades  during  the  winter  of 
1861-2.  From  the  brigade,  detachments  from 
each  regiment  were  sent  out  a  little  distance  from 
the  bivouac  of  the  brigade :  the  main  body  of  the 
reserve  picket.  These  detachments  were  estab- 
lished on  roads  and  other  approaches  by  which  it 
would  be  practicable  for  the  enemy  to  advance. 
Prom  these  detachments,  companies  were  sent 
farther  to  the  front;  from  these,  small  detach- 
ments were  sent  still  farther  to  the  front ;  and, 
from  each  of  these,  went  out  the  individual 
sentries  who  were  so  stationed  as  to  guard  the 
front  intrusted  to  the  care  of  the  brigade,  Avith 
one  unbroken  chain  of  pickets. 

The  company  detachments  were  the  reserves 
of  the  individuals,  upon  which  these  were  to 
fall  back  in  case  of  emergency,  or  from  which 
they  were  supported  if  this  course  was  practi- 
cable. The  company  detachments  fell  back  on, 
or  were  supported  by  their  companies :  these 
were  the  detachment  reserves.  The  companies 
fell  back  on,  or  were  supported  by  the  regimental 
detachments.  These  were  the  reserves  of  the 
companies  and  were  supported  by,  or  fell  back  on 
the  brigade.  This,  when  all  the  detachments  had 
rejoined  it,  was  able  to  deliver  battle  on  a  scale 
sufficiently  formidable  to  retard  the  advance  of  a 
p<iwerful  army  for  houi-s  at  a  time. 


But  all,  in  a  great  measure,  as  Avas  often  de- 
monstrated, largely  depended  on  the  vigilance 
and  invincible  courage  of  the  injjividual  picket. 

If  he  Avas  not  on  the  alert,  the  enemy  might 
quietly  pass  his  post,  capture  or  pass  one  after 
another  of  the  reserves,  penetrate,  surprise  and 
rout  the  main  body  of  the  army.  Such  Avas  the 
fate  of  some  large  bodies  of  troops,  several  times 
during  the  war  of  the  rebellion. 

It  was  midnight  in  the  early  days  of  18G2. 
Garland  Cloud  lay  by  the  smoldering  fire  of  the 
reserve  out-post,  where  his  OAvn  company  Avas 
on  duty.     He  was  reading.     Every  one  else  Avas 

asleep.    Capt.  J" ,  of  his  company,  was  making 

the  rounds  of  the  posts,  but  returned  about  this 
hour. 

Capt.  J :  "  What  are  you  reading,  Cloud,  so 

earnestly  this  bitter  night  by  that  handful  of 
coals?" 

Cloud:  "  The  Cavalry  Manual,  sir.  I  need  it 
sometimes.  I  often  meet  a  fancy  Yankee  chap 
beloAv  Annendale,  who  makes  his  handsome  bay 
turn  on  the  hind  feet  in  the  tAvinkle  of  an  eye, 
falls  over  to  the  off  side,  and  flies  away  from  there. 
I  want  to  learn  his  tricks,  and  to  catch  him,  too.  I 
am  going  through  the  lines  in  a  few  minutes.  I 
could  not  sleep,  was  lonesome,  and  had  nothing 
else  to  read." 

Capt.  J :   "You    are   a  very   foolish    boy 

to  expose  yourself  so  much.  You  get  no  credit 
for  it." 

Cloud:  "I  am  not  seeking  credit.  I  am  doing 
dut}^  I  enlisted  to  destroy  the  enemy.  Every 
man  or  horse  the  enemy  loses  tells.  Our  brigade 
has  lost  more  men  from  fever  since  the  21st  of 
July  than  it  Avould  have  lost  in  the  same  time 
Avith  every  man  actively  exposed  all  the  Avhile  as 
I  have  been.  Just  look  at  my  ruddy  health.  I 
can  kill  any  tAvo  of  you  at  hardships." 

Capt.  J :   "You  may  be  right,  but  you  are 

lucky.  I  hear  horrible  stories  about  your  reckless- 
ness on  the  21st  of  July,  and  doAvn  at  the  front 
since." 

Cloud:  "T  never  have  exposed,  never  shall 
expose,  myself  more  than  the  demands  of  duty 
require.     It  Avould  be  suicide." 

Capt.  ,J :   "  You  may,  at  all  events,  got  more 

glovA'  than  all  of  us.     If  you  Avcre  a  little  older, 


THE  PICKET  BIYOUAC. 


39 


you  would  soon  have  a  Itetter  commission  than  I 
have.  For  this  you  are  working  so  hard;  this 
accoijnts  for  your  studying  tactics  by  a  dim  fire  on 
a  bitter  winter  night;  you  intend  to  get  promoted 
from  the  ranks." 

Cloud:  "I  am  trying  only  to  do  my  duty.  I 
am  obscure,  and  without  influence,  experience 
or  capacity.  Any  service,  then,  that  I  may  be 
assigned  to  must  be  on  the  score  of  merit,  and 
not  of  friendship." 

Capt.  J :   "You  have   the   most  powerful 

friends  and  the  strongest  influence  in  the  army — 
are  personahy  acquainted  with  generals,  while  the 
rest  of  us  are  ahnost  afraid  to  approach  our 
Colonel.  I  feel  sometimes  that  it  is  a  judgment 
sent  on  us  for  thinking  ourselves  a  little  better 
than  you  Avhen  we  left  home.  I  have  long  been 
ashamed  of  this,  and  wanted  to  beg  your  pardon." 

Cloud:  "All  these  things  of  the  past  were  the 
outcome  of  class  education  and  social  usage,  and 
hence  were  but  natural  with  you.  I  tried  to 
treat  their  indication  with  indifference.  "War,  as 
you  all  have  found,  is  a  great  leveler,  Avith  no 
respect  for  social  conditions  nor  previous  rank, 
but  rather  rewards  men  according  to  their  ac- 
tions, their  merit,  and  their  virtue.  I  have  long 
since  proved  to  you  all,  that  I  cherish  no  animosit}'- 
in  memory  of  the  past.  I  have  nothing  against 
any  of  you.  Captain,  to  forgive,  and  trust  that  I 
have  no  reason  to  seek  pardon  for  anything  from 
you  or  from  any  of  the  boys." 

Capt.  J :  "  Tou  are^a  generous  boy,Cloud." 

The  Captain  then  grasped  Cloud's  hand,  and 
pressed  it  violentlj^ 

For  a  moment  the  two  proud  and  haughty  boys 
stood  speechless,  their  grand  blue  eyes  filling  with 
tears  which  the  fierce  wintry  blast,  beating  chill- 
ingly on  their  cheeks,  was  ready  to  congeal  should 
they  flow.  Tliey  heeded  not  the  pinching,  sting- 
ing cold.  Their  bodies  were  warmed  by  the  fiery 
glow  of  souls  replete  with  the  thrihing  emotions 
of  a  grand  and  courageous  devotion  to  the  cause 
and  the  land  they  loved  so  well. 

At  length  Cloud  broke  the  silence  :  "Oh,  Cap- 
tain; this  is  a  priceless  assurance  to  me  !" 

Capt.  J :   "From  the  bottom  of  my  heart 

I  thank  you.  Cloud.     I  have  long  desired  this  in- 
terview, but  my  heart  failed  me.     I  feared  you 


felt  a  rankling  bitterness  in  your  heart  for  me  be- 
cause of  some  hasty  words  at  some  time  spoken 
before  I  knew  you.  Some  strange  presentiment 
often  tells  me  that  some  day  the  sun  will  go 
down  shrouded  in  the  smoke  of  battle,  amid 
which  one  of  us  is  weltering  in  blood,  cold  and 
dead.  I  cannot  bear  to  think  of  going  with  your 
ill-will  unabated,  for  I  shall  be  the  stricken  one : 
you  are  a  child  of  destiny." 

Cloud  :  "  Nonsense.  You  have  the  blues.  Cap- 
tain.    I  must  leave  you.     Good-night." 

Capt.  J :  "Good-night.     Be  cautious." 

F^e  minutes  later  Garland  Cloud  had  disap- 
peared in  the  darkness,  and  was  traversing  a  dense 
woodland  wilderness. 


CHAPTER  X. 

SILAS     WORTHINGTON. 

"  Koll  on,  vain  days !  full  reckless  may  ye  flow. 
Since  timehatli  reft  me  of  all  mysoul  enjoyed." 
*   — Byeon. 

"Halt!  hold  up  your  hands  ;  dismount;  surren- 
der, or  you  are  a  dead  man  in  an  instant." 

This  was  the  startling,  cheerless  salutation 
which  pierced  the  still  and  frosty  air  in  the  grey 
twilight  of  the  January  morning  after  the  night 
referred  to  in  the  preceding  chapter,  addressed  to 
Col.  Silas  Worthington,  Quarter-master  United 
States  Army,  and  fell  with  quite  an  unwelcome  ca- 
dence on  the  old  gentleman's  ear.  There  was  at 
the  moment,  as  the  situation  then  appeared  to  him, 
no  other  alternative  but  to  acquiesce,  and  submit 
to  the  pressure  of  circumstances,  which  he  did,  and 
surrendered,  though  reluctantly,  yet  with  an  air 
of  cheerfulness  worthy  of  admiration. 

Col.  Worthington  was  a  wealthy  New-Yorker, 
though  a  native  Virginian  and  Southern  sympa- 
thizer. He  was  a  bachelor  merchant.  His  prop- 
erty and  business  were  so  situated  and  conditioned 
that  the  war  caught  him  with  his  interests  all 
hopelessly  tied  up  in  New  York  City.  His  strong 
and  well-known  Southern  sympathies  rendered 
his  affairs  desperate,  subjected  him  to  danger  of 
military  imprisonment,  and  jeopardized  his  prop- 
erty to  the  liability  of  confiscation ;  and,  in  order 
to  avert  these  menacing  dangers,  it  was  impera- 
tively necessary  that  he  should  do  something  to 


40 


MYSTIC  KOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


appease  the  wrath  before  its  concentrated  fury- 
should  explode  on  his  head — something  counter- 
acting; that  he  should  act,  and  act  vigorously  and 
immediately. 

However,  under  the  peculiar  circumstances 
which  enthralled  him,  there  was  but  one  action 
that  could  avail  him :  this  was  to  enter  the  army; 
therefore  he  tendered  his  services  in  the  capacity 
of  quarter-master. 

His  extraordinary  business  capacity,  consummate 
commercial  experience,  powerful  financial  influ- 
ence, and,  above  all,  his  great  wealth,  admirably 
qualified  him  for  that  department — made  him 
a  thoroughly  desirable  man;  and  his  services  were 
without  hesitation  accepted. 

He  was  on  duty  with  the  Army  of  the  Poto- 
mac. On  the  morning  in  question  he  received  an 
order  at  his  quarters  on  Arlington  Heights,  about 
two  o'clock,  to  report  immediately  to  some  general 
up  at  the  advance  infantry  post,  then  some  dis- 
tance to  the  front. 

In  the  darkness,  among  the  numerous  military 
roads, — all  of  which  constant  and  extensive  use 
had  formed  into  much  the  same  state  of  appear- 
ance when  viewed  even  in  daylight, — he  missed  his 
way,  and  rode  a  number  of  miles  in  a  direction 
that  was  every  moment  widening  the  distance 
between  himself  and  his  objective  point.  Having 
discovered  this  and  obtained  proper  directions, 
he  was  hastening  over  a  cross-country  by-road 
to  gain  his  destination,  when  he  was  so  suddenly 
and  rudely  halted  and  made  prisoner. 

His  pistol,  the  only  weapon  which  he  carried, 
was  unbuckled  from  his  waist;  the  belt  rebuckled 
and  hung  over  the  horn  of  his  saddle,  in  obedience 
to  the  order  of  his  ruthless  captor ;  then,  in  com- 
pliance with  a  request  made  by  the  same  uncouth 
individual,  he  led  his  superb  black  horse  forward. 

"Your  rank  and  command?"  was  the  next  de- 
mand made  by  his  captor. 

This  information  given,  the  prisoner  desired  to 
know  to  whom  he  had  surrendered. 

"You  have  surrendered,"  was  the  reply,  "to 
G-arland  Cloud,  of  the  Confederate  scouts,  sir.  I 
regret  to  be  under  the  painful  necessity  of  discom- 
moding you ;  but  there  are  many  unpleasant  ex- 
periences connected  with  war,  and  unfortunately 
for  you  this  morning,  you  have  met  with  one  of 


them.  You  appear  to  be  cold.  Take  to  that 
path,  and  walk  as  rapidly  as  you  please  until  you 
get  warm.     I  will  take  charge  of  the  horse." 

Instantly  Cloud  was  in  the'  saddle  witli  the 
agility  of  a  trained  trooper,  and  the  poor,  digni- 
fied old  Colonel  was  going  along  the  blind  path- 
way ahead  of  him  at  a  rather  unmilitary  double- 
quick.  For  some  time  they  thus  hastened  on, 
not  a  word  being  uttered.  At  length  the  pathway 
was  no  longer  visible;  they  were  in  a  dense  thicket, 
where  it  would  have  been  impossible  to  see  a  man 
at  any  great  distance — not  ten  paces  at  many 
points.  Cloud  then  informed  his  prisoner  that  he 
could  halt.  Bitter  cold  as  was  the  morning,  which 
had  covered  Cloud's  slight  moustache  with'  icicles 
that  completely  hid  his  mouth,  the  Colonel  was 
perspiring  profusely. 

Cloud  :  "  Now,  Colonel  Worthington,  I  will  tell 
you  something  of  the  situation,  and  what  I  am 
going  to  do.  "We  must  remain  here  probably  all 
day.  Moving,  we  are  liable  to  be  fired  at  by  the 
guns  of  either  army.  You  might,  in  that  event,  get 
hurt, — what  I  want  to  avoid  while  you  are  in  my 
care.  You  may  Hght  a  small  fire  if  you  wish, 
there  in  the  hollow  of  the  rock-cliif,  as  you  will 
get  cold  after  awhile.  It  is  necessary,  for  the 
reasons  stated,  that  I  shall  leave  you  alone  much 
of  the  time,  although  I  shall  hardly  be  out  of 
sight  of  you  more  than  two  or  three  minutes  at 
any  one  time ;  then  other  eyes  will  be  upon  you. 
I  must  watch  some  manoeuvres  from  the  brow  of 
this  hill.  I  will  caution  you  against  the  mad 
peril  of  an  attempt  to  e'scape.  If  you  move  tea 
paces  from  that  rock,  you  will  be  shot  without 
being  halted.  Our  scouts  are  all  around  you.  I 
will  have  word  passed  that  in  case  you  do  not 
move  you  are  not  to  be  molested." 

Col.  W :  "You  need  have  no  apprehen- 
sions. I  am  not  disposed  to  take  any  of  the 
chances  named,  although  I  should  almost  as  soon 
be  killed  as  remain  a  prisoner.  My  loyalty  is 
mistrusted.  Now  the  authorities  will  claim  that 
I  have  deserted  to  the  enemy.  They  will  want 
n'o  better  pretext  to  confiscate  my  property  and 
to  court-martial  me  whenever  I  am  exchanged." 

The  old  man  actually  sobbed,  while  his  cheeks 
were  copiously  sufiEused  with  tears. 

Cloud  :  "  Were  you  not  a  citizen  of  New  York  ?" 


SILAS  WORTHINGTON. 


41 


Col.  W :  "Yes;  but  I  am  a  native.of  Vir- 
ginia,-and  believe  the  South  is  in  the  right.  I 
have  two  brothers  in  your  army.  I  am  regarded 
as  a  traitor,  although  I  have  not  claimed  citizen- 
ship nor  held  pecuniary  interests  in  Virginia 
since  1835.  T  am  in  the  United  States  service, 
r  had  two  alternatives :  this  or  a  casemate  cell  in 
a  fort  to  choose  between,  and  I  have  taken  this, 
which  I  regarded  as  a  semi-civil  service,  in  which 
1  could  feel  that  I  was  a  non-combatant." 

Cloud  :  "  As  a  citizen  of  New  York,  you  owed 
her  allegiance  as  clearly  as  I  owed  mine  to  Vir- 
ginia." 

CoL.  W :   "So  I  have  tried  to    persuade 

myself.  Yet  I  am  sure  we  are  wrong  in  many 
respects.     I  know  you  well,  now,  Garland  Cloud."' 

Cloud:  "I  guess  you  are  mistaken." 

CoL.  W :    "I   refer    to   your   kindness   to 

Lawrence  Pleasington." 

Cloud  :  "  How  do  you  know  anything  about 
me  in  that  relation  ?  Who  is  Pleasington  ?  Where 
is  he  now?" 

Col.  W — — :  "I  know  these  facts  fully  from 
him.  He  is  one  of  the  finest  young  men  in  the 
army,  a  graduate  of  West  Point,  and  the  best 
horseman  in  our  service.  T  know  him  in  the  best 
society  in  New  York,  where  I  have  often  met 
him,  and  where  I  heard  all  about  your  kindness 
to  him,  in  ten  days  after  he  was  wounded.  He 
has  been  back  on  duty  since  some  time  in  Novem- 
ber. He  is  scouting  almost  constantly  up  around 
and  in  front  of  our  outposts,  somewhere  near 
here.  He  picks  up  a  good  many  of  your  boys, 
and  gets  into  some  tight  places  himself  by  riding 
into  ambuscades:  but  so  far,  his  self-possession 
and  skillful  horsemanship  have  enabled  him  to 
escape." 

Cloud:  ''How  about  his  Effie  love,  Colonel?" 

CoL.W :   "An  heiress  to  immense  wealth, 

and  justly  termed  the  belle,  if  not  the  queen  of 
the  belles;  certainly  one  among  the  rarest  of  them 
in  the  circles  in  Avhich  she  moves;  and  she  is  as 
modest  and  good  as  she  is  rich  and  beautiful. 
She  favored  Pleasington  on  account  of  his 
handsome  figure,  his  intelhgence,  and  above  all, 
his  purity  of  character  and  Hfe.  He  is  poor.  For 
this  reason,  her  relatives  bitterly  oppose  him;  but 
she  does  not  care  for  their  objections.     He  has 


been  promoted  since  he  returned  to  the  army,  and 
is  a  general  favorite.  He  has  assured  me  that  he 
would  not  raise  his  hand  against  you  after  he 
had  recognized  you,  such  is  the  magnitude  of  his 
appreciation  of  his  debt  of  gratitude." 

Cloud:  "I  trust  we  may  never  meet  in  mortal 
combat.  How  about  the  horse.  Colonel  ?  Is  he 
fast?  How  would  he  stand  fire?  And  the 
pistol;  is  it  loaded  and  reliable ?  " 

Col.  W :  "There  are  no  faster  horses  in 

the  army,  and  an  old  cavalryman  has  thoroughly 
trained  him  to  stand  artillery  fire  and  all  other 
frightful  sounds;  the  pistol  is  one  of  the  finest 
and  best  made,  and  contains  fresh  loads." 

Cloud:  "Well,  Colonel,  I  will  relieve  you  of 
the  care  of  these  articles.  You  will  have  enough 
to  do  to  keep  from  freezing.  Make  yourself  as 
comfortable  as  you  can  under  the  circumstances. 
Just  as  soon  as  there  is  no  danger  of  getting  you 
mixed  up  in  a  skirmish  we  will  move  out  from 
here." 

Without  waiting  for  a  reply,  he  rode  away, 
leaving  his  hopeless  prisoner  alone,  with  as  much 
reliance  that  he  would  not  attempt  to  escape  as 
though  he  was  guarded  by  two  sentinels. 

Cloud's  motive  at  this  time  was  safety  for 
himself ;  to  reconnoiter ;  to  seek  a  way  out  for 
prisoner  and  horse  if  possible,  but  more  especially 
to  avoid  personal  capture.  His  prisoner  was  an 
unexpected  contingency,  and  cause  for  solicitous 
embarrassment  at  this  hour  and  in  this  particular 
locality.  When  capturing  him  he  over-estimated 
the  military  rank  of  his  victim,  or  the  latter 
might  have  been  permitted  to  pass  unmolested. 
But  after  leaving  the  prisoner  in  custody  of  the 
rocks  and  the  forest-trees,  an  enexpected  circum- 
stance suddenly  frustrated  all  his  calculations  and 
changed  the  features  of  affairs. 

CHAPTER  XT. 

WHY     THEY     DID      NOT      FIGHT. 

"  We  have  met  and  we  have  parted, 
And  we  may  never  meet  again." 

Cloud  rode  to  the  brow  of  the  liill,  whence  the 
surrounding  country  Avas  visible  miles  away. 
South  two  hundred  yards  distant,  and  in  plain 
view,  there  was  a  cavalryman  on  vedette  duty; 


42 


MYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


two  hundred  yards  beyond  him  there  was  a  squad- 
ron— the  reserve  vedettes. 

Upon  finding  the  enemy  in  force  thus  uncom- 
fortably near,  Cloud  turned  and  rode  slowly  north, 
keepmg  well  in  the  edge  of  the  thicket  in  a  nar- 
row cattle  trail. 

The  cold  seemed  more  intensified  as  dark  and 
threatening  clouds  closed  over  the  horizon,  and 
Imng  low,  like  a  suspended  pall,  and  the  bleak 
north-east  wind  increased  in  velocity  from  a  stiff, 
whistling  and  disagreeable  blast  to  the  whooping 
current  of  a  sweeping  gale. 

Cloud  had  rode  barely  two  hundred  yards  when 
an  abrupt  turn  in  the  pathway  opening  disclosed 
a  magnificent  horse  less  than  ten  paces  in  front, 
and  his  rider,  who  had  dismounted  to  pass  a  tall 
fence  obstructing  his  passage  south,  was  cautious- 
ly fining  up  the  gap  which  he  had  made  and 
passed.  When  Cloud  discovered  him,  he  was 
stooping  to  raise  the  last  rail.  A  crisis  was  at 
hand.  Nothing  could  prevent  it.  Leveling  his 
carbine,  Cloud  quietly  and  mildly  said : 

"Surrender  instantly.  Make  one  aggressive 
move,  and  you  are  a  dead  man." 

"What  Avas  his  amazement  to  see  the  rail, 
which  the  trooper  in  the  meantime  had  raised 
straight  up,  laid  quietly  in  its  place  instead  of  be- 
ing dropped  in  panicky  confusion;  instead  of 
turning  deadly  pale  and  trembling  like  an  aspen- 
leaf  in  the  wind,  the  deep  crimson  of  defiance 
mounted  to  his  foeman's  cheek,  and  the  force  of 
spiritual  heroism  pervaded  his  frame  with  a 
strength,  a  presence  of  mind,  and  a  Avill  truly 
superhuman.  Cloud  recognized  at  a  glance  the 
agile  horseman  whose  feats  he  had  witnessed 
when  leaving  a  demand  to  surrender  unsatisfied 
on  other  occasions.  But  now  flight  was  impossi- 
ble, resistance  out  of  the  question.  Cloud  M-as 
half  disposed  to  conclude  that  the  man  was  deaf, 
and  had  failed  to  observe  his  imminent  peril. 
Yet  this  hallucination  was  quickly  dispelled. 
Cloud  was  amazed  at  the  coolness  thus  far  dis- 
played; but  he  was  paralyzed  when  he  saw  his 
adversary,  at  one  wild  bound,  spring  into  the  sad- 
dle, and  his  long  sabre,  with  a  dazzling  gleam,  flash 
from  its  sheath. 

After  months  of  daring,  always  presuming  on 
the   panic    created     by    surprise    at   the    critical 


moment  as  a  sure  preventive  for  the  necessity 
of  fighting.  Cloud  had  at  last  met  his  man;  he 
must  now  surrender,  die,  or  in  one  instant  send 
a  fatal  bullet  into  his  foe.  He  realized  the  great 
impropriety  and  danger  of  firing  a  shot.  But 
what  was  to  be  done?  He  had  no  sabre.  In 
one  instant  the  naked  blade  which  gleamed  before 
his  eyes  would  cleave  him  from  the  saddle. 
Already  the  able  and  daring  trooper  was  gather- 
ing the  reins,  bending  forward  and  poising  him- 
self to  send  the  spurs  into  the  fiery  charger. 
There  was  not  half  the  danger  in  a  whole  squad- 
ron which  Cloud's  fire  might  attract,  compared  to 
that  Avhich  he  now  faced.  His  resolution  was 
quickly  taken,  and  the  carbine  ranged  for  the 
mortal  aim  with  a  coolness  and  determination 
equal  to  the  bearing  manifested  bv  his  antagonist. 
Now  for  the  first  time  the  trooper's  eye  was 
fixed  in  one  instantaneous  gaze  on  the  face 
of  the  scout.  He  turned  pale  as  a  ghost.  His 
sabre  was  lowered;  his  hold  on  the  reins  slack- 
ened ;  the  spurs  did  not  pierce  the  sensitive  flanks 
of  the  noble  steed  to  goad  him  on  to  the  fear- 
less, maddening  plunge ;  and  the  trooper  hoarsely 
stammered : 

"Hold,  Cloud,  hold!  Don't  fire!  In  heaven's 
name,  hold! " 

What  could  have  so  suddenly  changed  the  rash 
determination  of  a  f  oeman  so  cool  and  so  intrepid  ? 
Was  it  terror  at  the  prospect  of  certain  and  in- 
stantaneous death — with  which  the  slight  advan- 
tage at  that  moment  in  his  opponent's  favor  ap- 
peared to  threaten  him — that  had  caused  the  color 
to  fade  from  his  courageous  cheek  ?  No,  indeed ; 
fear  was  in  no  wise  an  agent  that  had  any  part  in 
exercising  the  influence  by  which  he  was  actu- 
ated at  this  supreme  moment.  What  then  was 
it?  It  was  that  rare  and  radiant  gem  now  and 
then  found  in  the  combination  of  human  nature 
—  Gratitude. 

"  Yery  well,  then,  surrender,"  was  Cloud's  cold 
retort. 

"  No,  Mr.  Cloud,"  was  the  reply,  "  I  will 
neither  surrender  nor  fight  yon.  Shoot  me  you 
can.  But  you  are  too  brave,  too  noble  to  do  that, 
I  do  not  fear  it.  I  will  make  a  truce  with  you 
for  a  few  moments,  and  then  pass  in  peace.  You 
do  not  seem  to  recognize  me.  I  am  Pleasington, 
whose  life  you  saved  at  Manassas. 


WHY  THEY  DID  NOT  FIGHT. 


43 


Cloud  :  "  But  this,  Major  Pleasington,  this  is  a 
different  affair.  You  are  not  in  the  same  condi- 
tion you  were  then.  My  position  is  a  serious 
one.  It  is  my  duty  to  capture  or  kill  you.  You 
are  an  open  enemy  on  my  native  soil.  Were  we 
on  yours  I  might  deem  it  reasonable  to  pass 
you." 

The  Major  appeared  to  be  greatly  distressed ; 
almost  desperate. 

Maj.  P :   "But  your  magnanimity  will  not 

allow  you  to  refuse  me  a  truce  that  is  honorable 
to  you." 

Cloud  :  "  The  only  honorable  truce  I  can  make 
with  you  Avould  be  in  regard  to  your  surrender." 

Maj.  p. :  "Then  let  us  make  one  to  con- 
sider the  terms;  if  we  cannot  agree,  we  can  part 
in  peace." 

Cloud:  "But  we  can  discuss  this  without  a 
truce;  I  have  not  needed  and  do  not  need  one. 
I  do  not  propose  to  stand  here  parleying  until 
som'e  of  your  forces  come  up,  nor  am  I  so  simple 
as  to  permit  you  to  ride  down  "yonder  and '  turn 
that  squadron  out  aftep  me.  That  is  a  ruse  of 
strategy,  Major — avery^fine  one — but  I  cannot 
allow  it.  I  entertain  more  personal  kindness  for 
you  than  for  all  the  other  men  under  your  flag- 
combined  ;  but  were  you  my  brother  I  should  be 
obliged  to  do  my  duty,  however  painful  it  might 
be  to  me." 

The  Major  bit  his  lip  with  feelings  of  mingled 
rage  and  despair;,  then  said  slowly  and  with 
emphasis : 

"  Mr.  Cloud,  on  the  honor  of  an  officer  and  a 
gentleman,  none  of  our  forces  will  pass  this  path. 
I  am  supreme  commander,  for  this  day,  of  the 
posts  of  nearly  one  mile  of  front  here.  No  troops 
under  my  orders  shall  molest  you  unless  you  first 
openly  attack  them. 

"I  have  repeatedly  vowed  to  my  intimate 
friends  that  you  might  cut  me  to  mince-meat  and 
I  would  not  raise  my  hand  to  harm  you ;  and  they 
commended  my  sentiments  of  gratitude  to  a  gen- 
erous enemy.  Now,  do  you  believe  me  capable 
of  resorting  to  a  base  and  cowardly  trick  to  get 
you  into  my  power?  No  sir;  that  is  beneath 
me.  Had  any  other  man  in  the  world  except 
little  Flowers — God  bless  him — been  in  your 
place,  one  or  l>oth  of  us  would  now  be   dead  or 


desperately  wounded.  I  want  to  talk  quietly  and 
civilly  with  you  for  a  short  time." 

Cloud:  "All  right,  then*  I  accord  your  wish. 
Our  mutual  parole  of  honor  is  the  basis.  We  will 
dismount  and  lead  to  the  east,  a  hundred  yards  or 
so  into  this  wilderness,  where  scouting  parties 
will  not  disturb  us." 

Cloud  lowered  his  gun,  and,  suiting  his 
action  to  his  words,  he  dismounted  and  led  the 
way. 

Arrived  at  a  point  of  perfect  seclusion,  he 
stopped;  set  his  gun  down;  tied  the  horse;  un- 
strapped the  blanket  from  behind  the  saddle,  and 
spread  it  on  the  ground.  The  Major  then  went 
through  the  same  motions,  which,  when  completed, 
opened  the  way  to  mock  formalities.  Cloud  ad- 
vanced two  paces  to  meet  him — hand  extended, 
as  he  said : 

"Maj.  Lawrence  Pleasington,  as  a  soldier  of 
the  State  of  Virginia  and  of  the  Confederate 
States,  I  meet  you  amicably  under  an  informal 
truce,  and  hope  you  are  well." 

Maj.  p.  :  "  Mr.  Cloud,  as  a  soldier  of  the  United 
States  army  I  meet  you  on  the  same  basis,  and 
cordially  return  your  greeting'and  salutations." 

In  another  minute  they  were  seated  on  the 
same  blanket,  talking  with  the  easy  informality 
of  two  comrades.  Of  the  two,  the  Major  dis- 
played the  most  unreserved  freedom. 

Maj.  p.  :  "  Well,  friend  Cloud — for  friend  true 
and  tried  you  have  proved  to  me — through  your 
kindness  and  the  doctor's  good  and  careful  at- 
tention, I  was  soon  out  of  danger  and  sent  on 
to  prison,  and  thence,  before  long,  home.  I  was 
better  treated  throughout  than  most  of  our  people, 
and  all  owing  to  the  recommendation  of  the 
doctor — 3^our  good  friend  sent  with  me.  Please 
thank  him  for  me. 

"  I  found  mother  and  Effie  in  ecstasies  to  see 
me  back  ahve  and  well.  Your  name  is  often 
praised  by  them.  Sliould  ill-fortune  ever  make 
it  your  lot  to  be  a  prisoner  of  war  in  the  Northern 
States,  write  to  mother,  and  you  will  want  for 
nothing  that  money  can  supply.  Mother  and 
Effie  will  provide  for  you." 

Cloud  :  "  I  Avill  do  what  you  request  when  I 
can.  I  am  grateful  for  su?h  kind  sentiments  from 
3^our  good  friends.     I   trust   neither  of  us  may 


44 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


need  friendship  as  a  jsrisoner;  yet  there  is  no 
teUing  what  a  day  may  bring  forth  in  these 
regions." 

Ma.;,  p.:  "That  is  very  true. — As  I  hve,  you 
have  got  jioor  Col.  Worthington's  horse  and 
equipments.  Where  in  the  world  did  you 
secure  them?" 

Cloud  :  "  From  a  no  less  important  personage 
than  the  gallant  Colonel  himself,  astride  of  his 
charger." 

Maj.  p.:  "  Oh,  please  do  not  make  sport  of 
him  !  The  old  man  would  not  hurt  a  flea.  Where 
is  he  ?  I  sent  a  courier  to  him  last  night  with  an 
order  from  Gen.  R ,  of  some  importance." 

Cloud:  "He  got  lost  in  trying  to  obey  that 
order,  and  fell  into  bad  hands.  He  is  now  in  a 
place  of  safety." 

Maj.  p.  :  "  If  not  hopelessly  beyond  your  con- 
trol, let  me  take  his  place  as  a  prisoner,  and 
release  him.  He  will  never  harm  you.  It  will 
ruin  him,  and  probably  blast  all  my  hoj^es  in  life, 
if  he  goes  to  a  Southern  prison." 

Cloud  :  "  It  is  not  in  my  power  to  grant  your 
wish.  Is  it  possible  that  you  would  go  to 
prison  instead  of  a  man  at  heart  a  traitor  to  your 
cause?  He  is  a  commissioned  officer  in  your 
army.  I  ■  am  unable  to  understand  how  his 
property  could  be  confiscated,  unless  he  is  first 
convicted  of  treason.  If  being  captured  away 
from  their  posts  constitutes  treason,  a  good  many 
of  your  officers  are  traitors.  But  this  is  none  of 
my  business.  The  Colonel  told  me  some  such 
story  about  his  danger." 

Maj.  p.  :  "  Yes,  I  will  go  to  prison  for  him. 
He  has  been  my  best  friend  in  this  world.  I 
owe  him  everything;  even  my  appointment  to 
West  Point  was  obtained  through  his  influence. 
I  owe  him  directly  my  other  features  of  educa- 
tion ;  my  social  position — even  my  acquaintance 
with  Effie." 

"  Effie's  aunt  by  marriage  has  been  striving  for 
years  to  make  a  match  between  one  of  her  daugh- 
ters and  the  Colonel's  gold.  But  for  this  fact,  I 
am  sure  that  her  family  would  long  since  have 
broken  the  friendship  between  Effie  and  I,  which 
they  bitterly  oppose. 

"  This  lady  also  wants  Effie's  gold  married  to  a 
dissipated   nephew    of   hers.      Before   the  com- 


mencement of  the  war,  and  after  the  Colonel  gave 
up  his  mercantile  pursuits,  they  had  made  no  prog- 
ress in  the  direction  of  entangling  him  in  Cupid's 
snares;  but  now,  when  he  visits  NeAv  York,  he 
is  idle,  and  feels  blue. 

"  They  make  it  exceedingly  pleasant  for  him  at 
the  home  of  the  3'oung  lady,  and  consequently 
he  spends  many  hours  there,  and  has  grown  much 
fonder  of  her  society  than  he  was  in  former  years. 
In  the  army  he  has  much  time  dragging  on  his 
hands.  Hence  he  cheerfully  maintains  quite  a 
voluminous  correspondence  with  the  young  lady; 
and  I  think,  unless  this  calamity  with  which  he 
is  now  threatened  spoils  it  ah,  she  will  secure 
him. 

"  Now,  you  may  appreciate  how  very  impor- 
tant to  me  it  might  be  hereafter  if  I  can  save 
him." 

Cloud:  "My  sympathies.  Major,  are  certainly 
with  you.  Should  I  be  able  to  have  the  Colonel 
liberated,  you  may  have  the  credit  that  he  was 
released  on  your  account." 

Maj.  p.  :  "  Oh,  a  thousand  thanks !  May  I 
hope?" 

Cloud:  "I  can  promise  you  nothing.  Every- 
thing depends  on  circumstances ;  and  what  their 
nature  may  be  I  dare  not  attempt  to  conjecture." 

Maj.  p.  :  "I  feel  assured  that  if  you  can,  you 
will  help  me;  so  I  will  not  press  the  question." 

Cloud  :  "  It  would  be  unnecessary.  If  I  am 
able  to  release  the  Colonel  and  take  you  in  his 
stead,  at  day-break  to-morrow,  I  will  find  a  way 
to  advise  you  in  time.  It  seems  like  a  poor  trade 
to  give  a  colonel  for  a  major  even  ;  but  I  suppose 
the  difference  in  the  mischievous  propensities  is 
enough  in  the  Colonel's  favor  to  make  up  for 
your  lack  in  rank.  We  will  know  by  to-morrow 
what  happens." 

Maj.  p.  :   "I  do  hope  it  may  work  all  right." 

Cloud:  "I  want  to  warn  you  of  something. 
Major.  There  have  been  a  good  many  houses 
wantonly  burned,  and  other  outrages  committed 
by  your  people,  lately,  in  this  vicinity.  The  aven- 
gers are  abroad.  You  are  ab6ut  alone  a  good 
deal.  If  you  cross  their  path,  they  will  feel  sure 
you  are  a  prowler,  and  may  shoot  you  without 
warning." 

Maj.  ?. :  "  These  tilings  are  a  disgrace  to  our 


COSMOPOLITAN   ARISTOCRACY. 


45 


uniform.  General  McClellan  deprecates  and  does 
all  he  can  to  suppress  them. 

"  I  can  now  understand  why  my  letters  went. 
I  can  also  see  how  and  why  so  many  of  our  strag- 
gling, pleasure-seeking,  bandbox-drawing-room 
volunteer  officers  are  missing  so  frequently. 
These  things  are  no  longer  mysterious  wonders, 
with  you  and  your  comrades  in  our  lines,  with 
greater  freedom  than  our  own  men,  without  a 
pass,  could  possibly  enjoy." 

Cloud:  "Oh!  we  know  the  country.  We 
have  no  regular  time  to  come  nor  certain  route  to 
travel ;  we  turn  up  when  least  expected,  and 
almost  always  surprise  somebody.  You  are  never 
safe  without  a  strong  escort,  after  you  get  from 
under  the  protecting  shelter  of  the  guns  of 
Arlington  Heights." 

Maj.  p.  :  "I  shall  never  doubt  this,  after  the 
evidence  of  its  truth  which  I  have  this  day  wit- 
nessed." 

Cloud:  "Now,  Major,  my  engagements  are  of 
a  nature  so  pressing,  that  I  am  under  the  neces- 
sity of  terminating  this  interview.  I  trust 
you  will,  so  far  as  you  can,  protect  the 
defenceless  and  the  helpless  from  insult  and 
injury;  and,  in  the  meantime,  I  shall  bear  in 
mind  the  fact  that  you  are  Col.  Worthington's 
friend. 

Maj.  p.:  "  I  am  sorry  you  are  going  so  soon. 
Rest  assured,  I  shall  do  everything  in  my 
power  to  suppress  lawless,  uncivilized  warfare 
against  women  and  children. 

"  Without  either  a  tacit  or  an  implied  assurance 
from  you,  I  shall  hope,  just  a  little,  for  my  friend 
Col.  Worthington." 

Cloud:  "You  return.  Major,  the  way  we 
came.  I  part  with  you  here.  Remember  the 
parole  for  the  day.     Farewell." 

Maj.  p.:  "The  parole  is  as  sacred  as  my  life. 
Rely  upon  it. 

"  I  trust  soon  to  owe  you  another  debt,  on  the 
score  of  my  friend  Col.  Worthington.  Fare- 
well." 

Thus  met,  and  thus  parted,  on  this  bitter 
winter  morning,  two  brave,  tender  and  sympa- 
thetic hearts,  that  would  never  quail  before  a 
mortal  dancer. 


CHAPTER    XII. 
cosmopolitan     aristocracy. 

"  Of  its  own  beauty  is  the  mind  diseased; 
And  fevers  unto  false  creation.   Where, 
Where  are  the  forms  the  sculptor's  soul  hath  i 
In  him  alone.    Can  nature  show  so  fair?    Where, 
Are  the  charms  and  virtues  which  we  dare. 
Conceive  in  boyhood,  and  pursue  as  men ! 
The  unreached  Paradise  of  our  despair. 
Which  o'er  informs  the  pencil  and  the  pen, 
And  o'er  powers   the    page,   where  they    would    bloom 
again?"  — Byeon. 

Reader,  if  you  have  grown  tired,  hungry  and 
coJd  on  the  battle-field  and  among  the  outposts 
of  the  great  armies,  let  us  leave  them  in  the 
chilling,  pelting  storms  of  rigorous  mid-winter, 
and  pass  to  the  gay  and  charming  circles  which 
throng  the  brilliant  saloons  at  this  season,  in  the 
superb  realms  of  aristocratic  New  York. 

Aristocratic  New  York  of  1861  must  not  be 
confounded  with  aristocratic  New  York  of  1883. 
The  gigantic  strides  of  nearly  one-quarter  of 
this  progressive  nineteenth  cftitury,  have  told 
on  the  then  comparatively  circumscribed,  yet 
rarely  select,  domain  of  the  olden  time — have  ac- 
tually annihilated  it.  The  places  where  it  then 
flourished  in  its  enviable,  unapproachable  pride 
and  grandeur  are  illuminated  with-  the  Avitchery 
of  its  splendors  no  more.  The  sweUing  notes  of 
joyous  mirth  with  which  its  then  resplendent 
halls  resounded  are  silent  and  still.  As  to  these 
once  charming  circles,  oblivion  has  spread  her 
sable  mantle  over  the  mansions,  the  streets,  and 
the  avenues,  once  so  bright  and  sjilendid^ 
Scenes  of  loveliness  gone  with,  and  like  the  days 
that  are  dead — to  return  nevermore! 

To-day,  squalid  wretchedness  prowls,  or  vice 
and  shame  carouse  in  their  midnight  revelries, 
where  twenty-two  years  ago  the  belles  smiled, 
and  the  high-life  queens  of  beauty  held  their 
sway. 

A  wave  of  time  has  swept  over  the  little  king- 
doms which  were  then  subject  to  the  swaying 
sceptres  wielded  by  those  fair  and  haughty  hands; 
submerging  some  deep  down,  deep  beneath  its 
ruins  and  its  wrecks ;  bearing  others  out  to  where 
their  individuality  and  the  dominating  superior- 
ity of  their  sterling  characteristics  and  unsullied 
virtues  have  become  blended  with,  and  hopelessly 


46 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


lost  in,  the  chaotic  confusion  i^roduced  by  the 
new  order  of  things,  in  broader  and  more  ex-, 
tended  realms. 

In  plain  English,  this  class  in  1861  was  arislo- 
cratic.  Of  the  validity  of  its  claim  to  this  title, 
none  even  dared  presume  to  question,  but  at 
once  conceded  that  it  was  genuine.  It  was 
acknowledged  at  that  day,  and  still  reverentially 
esteemed  as  authentic  testimony  of  tradition. 
This  was  the  aristocracy  of  the  good  old  days  of 
ante-helium  times  —  the  pure,  deep,  clear,  blue- 
blooded  article,  which  had  been  handed  down 
from  generation  to  generation  as  a  legacy  from 
the "  centuries  gone,  and  slumbering  with  the 
dead  ages  of  the  past;  or  had  been  acquired 
by  years  of  long  and  patient  toil. 

There  was  nothing  spurious  about  this  ideal 
aristocracy.  No  members  of  this  chivalric 
patrician  community  had  sprung  up  by  the 
aid  of  the  low-pressure  force  of  army  contracts, 
or  by  the  sudden  appreciation  of  an  inflated 
currency,  or  from  questionable  speculation.  The 
days  of  colossal  hot-bed  fortunes  had  not  then 
appeared.  Aristocracy,  minus  every  essential 
requisite  save  money,  was  as  yet  unknown. 
At  that  time,  fortunes  had  not  been  coined  as 
if  by  a  stroke-  of  the  Enchanter's  wand. 

At  that  now  ancient  period,  aristocratic  Ncav 
York  was  not  pressing  up  near  100th  street. 
All  that  section  where  now  stand  princely  man- 
sions, were  desolate,  woe-begone-appearing  old 
fields,  far  out  in  the  country.  Central  Park, — that 
most  charming  oasis  of  to-day, — was  then  a  rude, 
unsightly,  uninviting  rural  landscape,  covered,  to 
a  large  extent,  by  squatters  and  their  browsing 
goats..  It  was  a  park ;  but  its  present  grandeur 
was  then  not  even  a  theme  for  the  indulgence  of 
the  wildest  and  the  most  extravagant  dreams. 

Grand  Central  Depot,  the  Elevated  Railways, 
the  Brooklyn  Bridge,  and  the  Hudson  River 
Tunnel, — realities  now, — would  then  have  been 
subjects  so  apparently  impossible,  as  to  render 
their  consideration  preposterous. 

But,  however,  while  the  progressive  men  of 
to-day  pause  for  a  moment,  in  their  hurried 
journey  of  hfe,  to  bestow  a  passing  thought 
upon*  the  men  of  twenty-five  years  ago, 
and   to  smile   at   their  simplicity,  let   them  not 


forget  to  contemplate  the  wonders  which  await 
the  men  of  twenty-five  years  hence.  Then  all 
present  barriers  to  wider  spreading  wil!  have 
been  outstripped  and  overcome.  New  York 
will  still  be  looming  up  and  moving  onward — 
the  world's  wonder — a  modern  Babylon. 

However,  we  are  on  our  way,  and  about  to 
enter  aristocratic  New  York  of  twenty-two 
years  ago.  The  dazzling  scenes  of  to-day  are 
still  behind  the  mystic  curtain. 

The  little  domain  we  are  rapidly  approaching 
is  bounded  by  no  long  catalogue  of  streets,  and 
contains  but  a  few  blocks  of  mansions. 

Modern  belle  of  society,  queen  of  beauty, 
pray  stifle  that  glow  of  contempt  mounting  to 
your  beautiful  cheek;  do  not  permit  that  dis- 
dainful smile  to  wreathe  your  pretty  lips  at 
the  association  of  that  unpretentious  region 
with  the  name  of  aristocracy;  because  within 
its  now  unhallowed  precincts  were  you  born^ 
and  there  you  passed  your  tender  years. 
Deign  to  bestow  upon  the  blighting  stains  which 
have  marred  its  once  bright  and  untarnished 
escutcheons,  one  sigh  of  regret ;  and  for  the  sake 
of  some  of  its  beautiful  queens,  who  as  martyrs, 
were  sacrificed  on  the  ruthless  altars  of  a  degen- 
erate age,  bequeath  one  tear  of  commiseration. 

The  social  circles  which  we  are  about  to  enter 
are  composed  of  elements  as  gay,  as  brilliant,  as 
pure,  and  as  good  as  any  in  the  same  walks  of 
life  to  be  found  anywhere  in  this  world.  The 
mask,  with  the  bitter  remorses  which  it  obscures, 
yet  cannot  all  conceal,  is  rarely  worn. 

Still,  however,  the  good  people  in  this  model 
state  of  amiable  harmony  and  exemplary  friend- 
ship, have  their  petty  jealousies  to  cherish,  their 
little  piques  and  spites  to  avenge,  and  their  ambi- 
tions to  gratify. 

The  match-scheming  mammas,  looking  out  for 
gold  to  which  to  wed  their  daughters — yes,  alas ! 
they  are  there.  Then  the  character  of  those 
whom  they  plot  to  entrap  has  to  be  irreproach- 
able :  this  and  ample  gold  constitute  the  acme  of 
eligibility.  It  is  unnecessary  that  they  should  be 
young,  or  handsome,  or  lovable,  or  the  objects  of 
their  dear  daughters'  choice — those  conventional 
husbands — and  usually  the  fair  victims  submit 
meekly  to  their  fate. 


COSMOPOLITAN  ARISTOCRACY. 


47 


At  the  period  when  we  are  about  to  look  in 
upon  the  gay  scenes  being  enacted  on  this  ex- 
clusively select  stage,  the  faintest  breezes  of 
that  air,  laden  with  the  bhghting  contagion  of 
social  pestilence,  are  just  beginning  to  pervade 
the  blissful  structure,  and  stealthily  to  fan  the 
cheek  enshrined  by  beauty's  sheen.  As  yet  its 
dangerous  presence  is  unrecognized.  So  like 
exhalations  from  the  purest  nectarine,  are  the 
odors  of  its  agony  poisonous  perfumes,  that 
unsuspecting  innocence  recoils  not  from  the 
soothing  subtlity  of  its  opiatic  influence.  Thus, 
little  by  little,  its  mahgnant  seeds  seciuely  ger- 
minate in  pure  and  guileless  hearts.  These 
ultimately  awake  from  the  allurements  of 
this  fatal  fascination  to  a  sad  consciousness  that 
they  are  hopelessly  enthralled  in  the  direful 
meshes  of  immedicable  destruction.  Now,  with- 
out the  semblance  of  disguise,  the  treacherous 
tempest  bursts  with  savage,  cruel  fury  upon  the 
defenseless  heads  of  its  victims.  Those  baneful 
seeds,  from  which  spring  the  wild,  deleterious, 
all-blasting  social  Upas,  are  to  be  nurtured  into 
dark  luxuriance  by  copious  fertilizing  with  deep 
mulches  of  confusion,  peculation,  and  demoraliza- 
tion, deluged  with  rivers  of  blood. 

Such  is  the  unblemished  purity  and  spotless 
repute,  and  such  the  threatening  epidemic  which 
menaces  that  social  sphere  of  wondrous  perfec- 
tion, challenging  the  admiration  of  all  times  and 
countries.  Here  are  the  yet  sparkling,  untar- 
nished gems  of  virtue,  directly  bequeathed  as  a 
heritage  to  this  generation  by  the  illustrious 
planters   of    Liberty's  Tree. 

Here,  now  and  then,  are  yet  to  be  seen,  a  few 
noble,  living  relics,  that  have  come  down  from 
those  glorious,  transplendent  days  of  the  by- 
gone time,  tottering,  vanishing  mementoes  of  the 
Eevolution. 

Now  they  behold  the  dark  days  of  civil  strife 
rending  the  fraternal  bonds  of  that  country  which 
they  have  loved  so  well, — the  pride  and  glory  of 
their  youth,  the  consolation  of  their  declining 
years, — and  see,  with  their  age-dimmed  eyes, 
seeds  of  corruption  taking  root  in  that  so- 
ciety for  which  they  have  labored  so  many 
years  Mnth  precept  and  by  example,  that  it  might 
retain  its  time-honored    standing  of   exaltation, 


on  the  waning  verge  of  decay,  as  they,  ripe  with 
fullness  of  years,  and  loaded  with  the  honors  of  a 
well-spent  life,  with  sorrow-broken  hearts  sink 
into  the  tomb. 

We  go  back  to  them,  to  that  haven  where  the 
noble  ships  in  which  they  made  their  voyage  of 
life  proudly  and  triumphantly,  rode  the  rough  and 
tumultuous  waves  of  Time,  to  seek  an  anchorage 
for  the  tempest-tossed,  helpless  crafts  of  another 
age. 

We  have  promised  a  picture  of  human  nature, 
drawn  from  all  colors,  shades,  and  phases  of 
actual,  real  life  of  the  present  time.  We  find 
that  the  base,  the  great  sub-strata — from  which 
nearly  all  the  most  striking  characters  of  human 
nature  at  the  present  day  have  sprung,  and  upon 
which  they  now  rest, — is  but  treacherous  quick- 
sand, the  seething  dregs  of  crur  Civil  War — a  sad 
and  lamentable  heritage. 

This  being  unquestionably  true  we  are,  per 
force,  under  the  inevitable  necessity  of  taking  its 
glaring,  deep-crimson  colorsof  commingling  fire  and 
blood  for  a  back-ground.  But  we  desire  slightly 
to  modify  it,  if  possible,  by  throwing  upon  it  a 
shade  of  contrasting  reflection  from  the  brightly 
shining  radiance  of  the  pure,  the  beautiful  and 
the  good.  Then,  when  all  the  little,  almost  inno- 
cent, social  shps,  and  the  great  crimes,  in  all  their 
multifarious  forms,  that  shame  and  degrade  the 
human  race  of  our  own  time,  ai-e  spread  upon  it, 
httle,  if  anything  more,  will  be  required  to  render 
this  picture  consummately  thrilling. 

The  few  who  yet  with  trials  and  dangers  to  the 
last  weather,  the  gale  or  float  on  the  dehris  of  their 
wrecks  to  a  safe  and  friendly  shore,  will  merit 
earnest  applause  and  rich  rewards.  Some,  who 
go  down  with  the  seething  torrents  may  be 
objects  for  a  passing  sigh  of  pity. 

We  pause  and  hesitate  to  enter  that  brilliant 
realm  where  beauty  and  purity  reign,  because  it 
is  a  Paradise  like  that  of  old  to  our  ancient 
parents,  which  we,  too,  are  doomed  to  leave ! 

But,  however,  it  is  worth  the  trouble;  let  us 
see  it.  There  we  shall  meet  our  Major  Pleas- 
ington's  own  Effie,  and  Colonel  Worthington's 
friends,  in  their  own  princely  homes.  Yes  ;  and, 
besides  these,  we  shall  become  acquainted  with 
other  actors,  who  will,  at  times,  cush  upon  the 


48 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


stage,  and  act  their  parts — some  Avildly  and  fiercely 
■ — in  our  drama. 

It  is  a  painful  task — a  duty,  which  makes  the 
heart  sick  and  the  mind  sad  to  present  some  of 
these  actors,  in  the  whirling,  giddy  tranforma- 
tion  scenes  through  which  they  must  be  hurled. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

THE   MOUNTJOYS. 

"  They  were  meek  and  they  were  modest, 
They  were  handsome  and  they  were  tall. 
Their  hair  was  black,  and  they  wore  It  curly. 
And  oh !  their  sweet  blue  eyes  withal." 

—Sentimental  Song. 

The  above  lines  describe  the  four  Misses 
Mountjoy  with  due,  impartial  appropriateness. 

The  Mountjoy  mansion,  situated  in  the  centre  of 
the  little  domain  styled  in  the  preceding  chap- 
ter as  "  Aristocratic  New  York  of  1861,"  was 
famous  in  its  day. 

Norman  Mountjoy  was  a  Avealthy,  an  enter 
prising,  and  a  prosperous  wholesale  merchant, 
the  head  of  an  old  house.  His  father  and  grand- 
father before  him  had  been  merchants.  The 
business  had  grown  up  to  be  something  of  stu- 
pendous magnitude,  upon  a  foundation  more  than 
a  century  old. 

Early  in  life  Mr.  Mountjoy  married  Helen 
Noel, — a  majestic  young  queen  of  beauty, — from  a 
proud  and  imperious  old  family.  She  was  a  bright 
social  ornament,  and-  while  profusely  liberal  in 
the  appointment  of  her  household,  she  could  not, 
in  her  earlier  matrimonial  years,  be  deemed  ex- 
travagant beyond  what  her  husband's  means  and 
their  social  position  Avarranted — nay,  almost  de- 
manded. He  idolized  his  lovely  young  wife. 
Even  her  most  trivial  whims  and  foibles  were 
gratified  with  spontaneous  alacrity.  Whatever 
Helen  Avanted  Avas  her  devoted  husband's 
greatest  pleasure  to  grant.  He  often  said:  "If  it 
affords  Mrs.  Mountjoy  as  much  pleasure  to  spend 
money  as  it  affords  me  to  make  it,  we  are  a  con- 
summately happy  couple." 

In  every  relation  of  life,  social  and  commercial, 
Norman  Mountjoy  Avas  the  quintescence,  the 
very  soul,  of  honor.  It  was  a  common  watch- 
word in  his  business  sphere  concerning  any  com- 


mercial  transaction:  "If  Mr.  Mountjoy  says  so, 
it  is  all  right:  his  opinion  is  as  good  as  law." 

Mountjoy  House  had  been  a  grand  old  surbur- 
ban  mansion  of  the  olden  time.  It  stood  in  the 
centre  of  a  broad  tract  of  ground,  artistically  laid 
out  into  most  beautiful  floAver-plats  and  shrubbeiy 
arcades,  intersected  ever  and  anon  by  handsome 
gravel  walks,  fringed  Avith  evergreen,  trimmed 
and  arranged  Avith  the  most  scrupulously  deli- 
cate taste.  Around  and  above  all  loomed  up 
and  spread  out  their  paternal,  protecting  arms, 
the  grand  old  shade-trees,  some  of  them  senti- 
nels of  departed  centuries,  monumental  children 
of  a  virgin  forest. 

The  house  itself  Avas  large  and  roomy,  Avith 
grand  old  porticoes  resting  on  hugh  pillars; 
broad,  high  hall,  parlors,  draAving-rooms,  library, 
dining-hall,  and  chambers  of  dimensions  to  rival 
those  of  baronial  palaces  of  the  dead,  the  legen- 
dary, and  the  historical  ages.  This  princely  old 
mansion  Avas  furnished  in  most  exquisite  style, 
well  becoming  the  state  of  a  merchant  prince,  and 
in  harmonious  accord  with  the  tastes  and  the 
Avishes  of  his  refined  and  adorable  Avife. 

Aristocratic  New  York,  as  we  noAv  behold  it, 
in,  as  it  were,  a  dream  or  vision,  had  steadily  en- 
croached upon  and  sprung  up  around  Mountjoy 
House,  depriA'ing  it  of  its  rustic  environments, 
without,  however,  robbing  it  of  its  OAvn  peculiar 
rural  distinctiveness  and  traditional  exclusiveness 
— privileges  that  its  modern  neighbors  could  not 
enjoy — enviable  luxuries,  denied  to  metropolitan 
denizens,  save  the  rarely  exceptionable  foAV. 

Such  were  the  parents,  such  tlie  home,  and 
such  the  surroundings  in  which,  under  the  foster- 
ing shelter  and  benign  influence  of  its  guardinn 
walls,  had  sprung  up,  budded  and  bloomed  into 
sweet  and  perfect  womanhood,  like  incarnation 
nymphs  created  by  the  old  Romancers  in  their 
scenes  where  appear  the  fairy  enchantresses,  four 
matchless  young  ladies,  to  rival  any  who  ever 
graced  the  gilded  saloons,  amid  the  splendors  of 
Oriental  palaces.  They  Avere  tall,  stately,  and 
dignified;  and  in  every  delineation  their  robust 
model  figures  presented  to  the  admiring 
eye  the  most  pleasing  proportions  and 
symmetrical  harmony  of  form  that  the  most 
infatuated    di'eamer   of  beauty  could  picture;    in 


THE  MOUNTJOYS. 


49 


every  lineament  of  their  charming  features  was 
clearly  and  unmistakably  discernible  the  imprint 
of  all  the  graces  combined;  and  in  their  large, 
dreamy,  deep  blue  eyes,  which  seemed  always 
speaking  in  a  silent  yet  pathetic  language, 
sparkled  that  brilliant  gem  of  a  rare  and  radiant 
virtue.  To  these  wondrous  and  divine  charms  of 
nature  were  added  all  that  refined  art  and  cult- 
ured associations  could  bestow,  to  render  these 
young  queens  of  fashion  and  of  beauty  deli- 
cately polite,  meekly  graceful,  gently  dignified 
and  modestly  adorable. 

Many  good,  old-fashioned,  unassuming  old 
people,  often  said  of  the  four  sisters :  "  Why, 
they  are  just  as  near  alike  as  four  black-eyed 
peas." 

However,  Avhile  in  appearance  and  conversa- 
tion the  resemblance  was  so  striking  that  a  per- 
son not  well  acquainted  with  them,  was  liable  to 
mistake  any  one  of  them,  for  some  other  of 
the  four,  yet  still,  in  some  characteristics,  they 
were  not,  by  a  wide  difference,  as  closely  alike  one 
other  as  the  peas. 

Cassandra,  the  oldest,  was  a  trifle  the  most 
haughty  and  impatient.  Beatrice,  the  next  in 
years,  was  Hke  her  sister,  in  a  milder  degree, 
with  the  slightest  tendency  in  some  matters  to 
be  fickle.  Rosalind,  the  third  sister,  was  predis- 
posed to  be  intensely  romantic.  Evahna,  the 
youngest,  was  patience  and  resignation  personi- 
fied. These  were  the  four  fair  daughters  of 
fortune.  They  never  imagined  a  want  that  was 
not  gratified,  if  not  even  anticipated;  and  they 
had  never  known  a  sorrov/.  Could  their  voy- 
age on  through  life  ever  glide  with  the  same 
unruffled  serenity,  they  would  fulfill  the  highest 
earthly  destiny  to  which  it  is  possible  for  human 
beings  to  attain,  crowned  with  consummate 
honors.  But  should  the  wild  tempests  of  dis- 
aster hurl  their  light  craft  swiftly  and  furi- 
ously upon  the  cruel  breakers,  and  leave  it 
there  stranded,  a  hopeless  wreck,  how  would 
these  frail  and  delicately  tender  green-house 
flowers  brook  the  merciless  storms  that  would 
beat  with  relentless  violence  on  their  defenceless 
heads.  These  cliildren  of  fortune  had  never 
dreamed  of  misfortune ;  they  scarcely  knew  the 
true  definition  of  the  term,  and  were  certainly 


not  nurtured  to  bear  its  stings  with  unmurmur- 
ing fortitude  ;  to  indomitable  self-reliance,  such  as 
the  stern  exigencies  of  some  terrible,  soul-testing 
calamity  demand,  they  were  utter  strangers. 
To  contemplate  the  pitiless  grasp  of  misfortune 
seizing  the  self-willed  and  self-reliant,  is  terrible; 
but  when  the  helpless  children  of  fortune  are  the 
hapless  victims,  it  is  appalling. 


CHAPTER  XIV, 

EFFIE  EDELSTEIN. 

"  Bluo  were  her  eyes  as  the  fairy  flax,— 
Her  cheeks,  like  the  dawn  of  day, 
And  her  bosom  white  as  the  hawthorn  buds, 
That  ope  in  the  month  of  May." 

—Longfellow. 

This,  friends,  is  Lawrence  Pleasington's  Etfie 
love.  Do  you,  in  the  secret  recesses  of  your 
hearts,  blame  him  for  idolizing,  even  worshiping, 
this  little  earthly  angel  ?  If  you  do,  we  do  not. 
Every  one  who  knew  her  loved  her.  With  her, 
wherever  she  went,  there  went  a  halo  of  sun- 
shine in  her  smile,  an  echo  of  love  in  the  ca- 
dence of  her  voice.  In  her  were  combined  all 
the  charms,  all  the  graces,  and  all  the  virtues 
of  her  fair  cousins  introduced  in  the  preceding 
chapter,  Avithout  one  of  the  slight  imperfections, 
that  it  was  mildly  hinted  that  the  three  eldest 
possessed.  In  addition  to  all  this,  she  was  mis- 
tress of  all  the  self-reliance  and  courage  necessary 
to  sustain  her  in  any  possible  emergency. 

Is  this  concise  description  satisfactory  ?  If  it 
is  not,  there  is  no  language  in  this  world  to  do 
the  subject  justice. 

Her  father  was  a  descendant  in  direct  line 
from  a  noble  German  family, — his  immediate 
ancestors  having  come  down  through  the  rude, 
pioneer  experiences  of  the  old  Dutch  colony  from 
its  earliest  days.  Her  mother  was  Norman 
Mountjoy's  only  sister,  who  died  when  Elfie  was 
a  little  child. 

Her  father  was  a  prosperous  merchant,  and  the 
intimate  friend  of  Silas  Worthington.  He,  too, 
died  after  a  protracted  and  lingering  illness,  when 
Effie  was  ten  years  old,  leaving  her,  his  only 
child,  an  immense  fortune  for  that  age  of  the 
world. 


50 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


Silas  Worthington  Avas  appointed  administrator, 
and  little  Effie  was  left  to  the  care  of  Mrs.  Kate 
Eber,  her  father's  sister,  between  whom  and 
Lawrence  Pleasington's  mother  there  had  been  a 
life-long  and  intimate  friendship. 

The  Avill,  under  the  sagacious  supervision  of 
Mr.  Worthington,  was  drawn  up  by  one  of  the 
ablest  and  most  .skillful  lawyers,  with  admirable 
tact  and  wonderful  ingenuity,  so  that  it  was 
impossible  for  any  portion  of  her  fortune  to  be 
touched,  except  a  moderate  annual  stipend  set 
apart  for  her  support  and  education,  until  she  was 
twenty-one  years  of  age, 

Lawrence  Pleasington  was  the  protege  of  Mr. 
Worthington.  This  fact,  connected  with  his  re- 
lation to  Effie,  and  the  friendship  existing  between 
her  aunt  and  his  mother  will  account  for  the 
intimate,  perchance  more  tender  and  endearing, 
ties  between  these  two  young  persons. 

Eifie  loved  her  cousins,  and  spent  much  time 
with  them.  Between  her  and  Evalina,  there 
was  an  extraordinary  affinity,  devoted  attach- 
ment. Of  the  same  age,  Avith  the  same  tastes, 
and  the  same  opinions  in  all  things,  on  all  sub- 
jects— even  to  Effie's  strong  preferences  for 
Lawrence  Pleasington's  society  and  friendship — 
there  is  no  rule  by  which  the  depth  of  love, 
springing  from  their  pure  and  innocent  hearts, 
can  be  measured.  Nothing  could  ever  shake  the 
foundation  of  its  steadfast  affection — a  consecrated 
shrine,  where  the  incense  of  love  ever  glows, 
forever  rekindled  by  the  sparks  of  a  sublime 
friendship,  an  endless  and  an  eternal  devotion. 


CHAPTER  XV. 


MAUD      P  L  K  A  S  I  N  G  T  O  N  . 


"  The  sorrows  that  bow  down  my  head 
Are  silent  as  the  midnight  gloom." 

—From  KiTTiE  Wells. 

This  is  Lawrence  Pleasington's  widowed 
mother.  She  is  from  a  good  old  family — but 
now,  the  last  of  her  race. 

Her  husband,  a  self-made  man,  from  Virginia, 
married  her  when  they  were  both  young. 
He  prospered  as  a  merchant,  and  became  the 
bosom  friend  of  Silas  Worthington. 


Around  the  j'oung  coujile  si)rang  lip,  in  the 
course  of  fifteen  years  of  prosperous  and  happy 
matrimonial  life,  a  family  of  seven  children- 
Lawrence,  the  baby. 

Then  came  dark  days  of  reverse,  trial,  and 
death.  The  mercantile  interest  was  consumed 
by  fire  the  same  night  after  the  insurance  had 
collapsed  at  noon.  Through  an  oversight,  caused 
by  illness  in  his  family,  which  had  for  several 
days  kept  him  absent  from  his  office,  the  policy 
had  not  been  renewed. 

In  the  brief  space  of  ten  days,  the  malignant 
fever  laid  six  of  his  children  beneath  the  sod ; 
and  on  the  fourteenth  day  the  broken-hearted 
father  followed  his  little  children  across  the  dark 
river;  and  left  behind — oh,  cruel  fate ! — his  pov- 
erty-stricken, grief-smitten  widow  and  orphan 
babe  on  this  desolate,  friendless  shore. 

Oh,  God !  what  would  have  become  of  them, 
in  their  dismal,  hopeless  despair,  but  for  one  noble 
heart,  one  true  friend,  Silas  Worthington,  consti- 
tuted by  Heaven  their  guardian  ? 

Assisted  and  encouraged  by  their  foster  pro- 
tector, they  lived ;  and  Time,  the  great  healer  of 
the  broken,  bleeding  heart,  and  the  love  of  her 
sweet  little  bright-eyed  boy,  soothed  the  widow's 
woes.  She  saw  her  son,  a  handsome  young 
officer — her  pride. 


CHAPTER  XVT. 

ARNOLD    NOEL. 


In  virtue's  ways  he  never  took  delight ; 
But  he  loved  wine  and  carnal  company. 


This  is  the  young  scapegrace,  dissipated 
nephew  of  Mrs.  Helen  Mountjoy,  whom  that 
lady  is  resolved  shall  possess  that  rare  and  price- 
less jewel,  Effie  Edelstein,  and  her  wealth. 

His  father  is  a  prominent  merchant,  in  a  neigh- 
boring city ;  and  his  family,  which  is  large,  ranks 
first-class.  One  brother,  although  a  very  young 
man,  is  already  an  officer  in  the  United  States 
navy ;  and  one  sister  is  married  to  a  first-class 
New  York  merchant. 

Young  Arnold,  from  a  small  boy,  has  been  the 
black-sheep  of  the  flock;  yet,  notwithstanding 
this  fact,  he  is  his  father's  favorite  child.     The 


SOME  FREQUENTERS  OF  MOUNTJOY  HOUSE. 


51 


old  man,  however,  often  tells  him,  with  tears  in 
his  eyes,  that  he  will  come  to  some  bad  end,  and 
bring  him  in  sorrow  to  the  grave,  in  his  last 
declining  age.  But,  to  the  youngster,  these  are 
idle,  meaningless  words,  and  are  unheeded. 

At  the  period  of  life  Avhere  we  now  find  him, 
aged  fifteen  years,  he  is  in  New  York,  at  school, 
under  the  care  of  his  aunt  and  sister ;  never 
knows  his  lessons,  and  is  always  in  scrapes,  both 
in  and  out  of  school.  Sometimes,  indeed,  it  is 
only  on  account  of  his  well-known  family  that 
the  police  do  not  take  charge  of  him.  For  less 
cause,  many  poor  lads  are  every  day  arrested. 

On  one  point  he  appears  sane;  that  is,  getting 
possession  of  the  Edelstein  fortune.  The  money 
to  gratify  his  vicious  appetites  and  indulge  his 
indolent  propensities,  is  the  dream  of  his  life.  He 
has  been  educated  to  regard  it  his  prize.  For  this 
reason,  he  practices  an  artfully  studied  decorum 
Avhenever  he  is  in  Miss  Effie's  presence;  and 
tries  to  please  her.  She,  on  her  part,  is  too  re- 
fined, and  too  good  and  tender-hearted,  willfully 
to  wound  any  one's  feelings. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

SOME    FREQUENTERS    OF    MOUNTJOY    HOUSE. 

"  Thine  eyes,  like  the  stars  that  are  gleaming. 
Have  entered  the  depths  of  my  soul ; 
And  my  heart  has  grown  wild  with  its  dreaming, 
And  with  feelings  I  cannot  control." 

—Sentimental  Song. 

Lieut.  Oklando  Ogletheop. 

This  was  a  class-mate  and  is  the  bosom-friend 
of  Lawrence  Pleasington.  He  was  an  obscure, 
New  York  mountain-boy,  who  found  his  way  to 
West  Point  through  the  influence  of  a  member  of 
Congress  from  his  district,  who  met  the  lad  dur- 
ing the  canvass,  and  took  a  fancy  to  him. 

He  spent  some  weeks  in  New  York  with  Law- 
rence. Met  Mr.  Worthington,  who  became  his 
warm  and  admiring  friend ;  and  through  him  the 
young  man  was  introduced  to  the  Mountjoys. 

Despite  the  fact  of  his  plebian  origin,  Miss 
Evalina  likes  him.  He  worships  her,  but  has  the 
good  sense  and  prudence  not  to  let  the  fact  be 
known.       He  is  always  welcomed  at  Mountjoy    | 


House,  and  always  calls  whenever  he  visits  the 
city. 

Samuel  Van  Allen 
is  a  wealthy,  prominent  married  New  York 
gentleman.  He  is  a  friend  and  favorite  of  Mr. 
Mountjoy.  He  stands  well  as  a  business  man, 
and  is  a  prominent  pillar  of  one  of  the  lead- 
ing churches.  This  gentleman  is  extremely  fond 
of  the  society  of  ladies. 

Felix  Mortimer 
is  another  city  gentleman,  wealthy,  influential 
and  married.  He  is  also  a  special  friend  of  Mr. 
Mountjoy,  and  much  esteemed  at  his  house. 
He  is  the  business  partner  of  Mr.  Van  Allen,  and 
the  President  of  a  prominent  bank. 

Ira  Atkinson 
is  a  wealthy  bachelor,  and  a  great  favorite.  He 
is  a  merchant,  a  member  of  the  first  house  in  its 
line  in  the  city.  Although  old  enough  to  be  her 
father,  he  is  designed  by  Mrs.  Mountjoy  to  be  the 
husband  of  one  of  her  fair  young  daughters. 

Adam  Stringfellow 
is  also  a  bachelor,  with  an  ample  hoard  of  gold. 
He  is  the  business  partner  of  Mr.  Atkinson ;  and 
Mrs.  Mountjoy  desires  that  he  shall  be  united  in 
matrimony  with  another  one  of  her  daughters. 
While  this  man  and  his  partner  are  thus  prized 
by  Mrs.  Mountjoy,  her  husband,  for  purely  com- 
mercial considerations,  hghtly  esteems  them. 

Christopher  Singleton 
is  a  young  gentleman,  possessed  of  more  hand- 
some features  and  fascinating  manners  than 
money.  He  has  a  fancy  for  Cassandra  the  de- 
signed fiancee  of  Colonel  Worthington ;  but  the 
Colonel's  wealth  and  the  mother's  influence  are 
against  him.  These  are  the  most  brilliant  fights 
that  often  grace  the  grand  old  parlors.  Besides 
these  there  are  many  others  of  prominence,  but 
not  as  actors  in  this  drama. 

We  do  not  deem  it  important  to  define  our 
characters  more  elaborately  in  this  connection,  as 
their  predominating  propensities  will  be  fully 
demonstrated  as  their  parts  develop.  The  careers 
of  some  of  these  characters,  just  introduced, 
would  be  ample  foundations  for  complete  and  in- 
dependent stories ;  while  their  parts  in  this  book 
are  comparatively  limited. 


52 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

THE     SENSATION    AT    MOUNTJOY    HOUSE. 

"On  with  the  dance,—" 
No  sleep  till  morn,  when  youth  and  beauty  meet, 
To  chase  the  glowing  hours,  with  flying  feet." 

—Byron. 

At  last  we  are  in  the  fairy  dream-land  of  gay 
and  festive  New  York,  and  on  our  way  to  the 
Mountjoy  sensation  of  the  season. 

As  our  friends  are  there  presented  to  us,  we 
■•hall  not  be  under  the  necessity  of  speaking- 
aside  in  an  embarrassing  undertone,  to  explain 
just  who  each  particular  one  is,  as  this  duty  has 
been,  already,  fully  performed  on  the  journey 
from  the  front  from  beyond  Arlington  Heights. 

^lercy!  Just  look!  What  transparent  bril- 
liancy !  See  how  the  grand  old  mansion  is  il- 
luminated! What  wonderful  taste  has  been 
displayed  in  arranging  the  lights!  How  indescrib- 
ably tempered  is  the  mellowness  of  their  en- 
chanting shades!  How  captivatingly  ravishing 
to  the  eye  the  charm  of  their  fascinating  reflec- 
tions in  tints  of  orange  and  of  gold!  Behold  the 
witching  groups  upon  which  they  shine! — fair 
-women,  noble  and  brave  men — ass  imbled  chivahy 
and  beauty — all  upon  which  the  eye  delights  to 
feast.  How  elegantly,  how  superbly,  they  are 
dressed!  Everything  perfect  decorum,  in  har- 
monious accord  with  the  latest  and  most  ap- 
proved st3dea  and  fashions  of  the  day.  Nothing, 
not  the  smallest  possible  item,  in  any  respect, 
whether  with  reference  to  the  appointments  of 
the  magnificent  saloons,  or  the  personal  decora- 
tions and  appearance  of  the  polished  and  selectly 
chosen  guests,  has  been  omitted  that  could  by 
any  sort  of  peradventure  tend  to  render  the 
event,  if  not  matchless,  certainly  unsurpassable. 

Let  us  plunge  into  the  crowd,  and  mingle  with 
the  festive  and  the  gay,  and  see  and  hear  what 
we  may. 

Can  it  be  possible  that  the  widely  contrasting 
scene,  amid  canvas  and  smoke,  which  we  left  last 
evening,  is  in  the  same  country,  composed  of 
the  same  people,  even  the  very  same  families, 
as  this  which  is  now  before  us,  under  the  be- 
wildered gaze  of  our  open  eyes?  Surely  not; 
yet  it  must  be. 


Just  think  of  it! — those  menacing  armies  face 
to  face;  the  infernal  machines  of  war,  being 
every  hour,  day  and  night  rushed  forward  to 
perfection — the  agents  of  death  merely  slumber- 
ing,— waiting  for  the  igniting  spark  to  arouse 
them  from  their  lethargic  inertness  to  throbbing 
pulsations  of  vigorous  life.  Then  Avill  they  madly 
bound  in  their  wild  and  pitiless  career  of  de- 
structive carnage,  turning  in  one  hour  all  these 
festive  wreaths  which  we  now  behold  in  won- 
dering admiration  to  sable  badges  of  saddest 
mourning;  those  fair  and  radiant  cheeks  all  aglow 
at  hearing  the  praises  of  their  own  loveliness  to 
the  pallor  of  death, — and  these  rose-tinted 
lips  to  the  whiteness  of  despair;  the  same  as  was 
witnessed  in  Belgium's  proud  capitol,  one  festive 
night  forty  odd  years  ago. 

Our  thoughts  instinctively  turn  from  these 
bright  and  blissful  scenes  to  those  dark  and  mel- 
ancholy ones,  with  emotions  of  horror ;  and  the 
contemplation  of  the  painful  and  sad  transition, 
conjures  up  a  thrill  of  inexpressible  sadness. 

Well,  our  object,  however,  in  visiting  the  grand 
fete  to-night,  is  to  meet  those  actors  who  have 
assumed  the  responsibility  of  filHng  roles,  per- 
forming each  a  part  in  this  drama  of  life;  and  here 
to  learn,  as  far  as  we  can,  how  they  are  map- 
ping out  their  parts,  and  what  relation,  if  any, 
tliese  parts  are  going  to  bear  to  one  another ; 
and  to  detect,  if  we  can,  what  influence  they  are 
likely  to  exercise  on  the  actors  themselves,  and 
in  what  manner  that  influence  will  afiect  them. 
With  other  parties,  and  other  themes,  at  the  fes- 
tival, we  have  no  business ;  and  we  must  refrain 
from  meddling  with  them. 

We  must  remember,  also,  that  we  are  merely 
tolerated  spectators,  and  not  privileged  partei- 
pants ;  therefore,  let  us  take  a  commanding  seat  in 
a  central  position,  and  observe  the  gay  and  festive 
scenes  as  they  are  enacted  around  us. 

Ah!  this  will  do — magnificent!  What  ex- 
quisite music!  Splendid!  There  is  Lady  Mount- 
joy  and  Mr.  Mortimer  taking  that  seat  near  us. 
Look !  listen !  they  are  in  animated  couA-ersation. 

Mortimer  :  "  How  charming  Effie  is  in  that 
waltz!  Look  at  Arnold — but  is  he  not  in  his 
glory?  How  graceful  he  is! ' 

Lady  M :  "Yes;  Effie  is  rarely  so  radiant 


THE  SENSATION  AT  MOUNTJOY  HOUSE. 


53 


as  she  is  to-night.  She  makes  Arnold  dignified. 
For  several  days  before  he  is  to  meet  her,  he  is  a 
different  boy.  If  he  could  only  see  more  of  her, 
her  influence  would  soon  cure  all  his  wild,  boyish 
impulses.     I  regret  that  they  are  so  young." 

AIouti.mkr:  '-Ah,  my  dear  lady,  you  are  right 
about  that.  Many  things  of  which  we  do  not 
now  dream  are  likely  to  happen,  to  thwart  your 
plans  relative  to  this  young  couple  before  they 
arrive  at  an  age  for  your  wishes  to  be  rewarded 
by  a  realization  of  their  consummation.  Frankly, 
Madam,  the  young  man's  wild  freaks  are  among 
the  most  dangerous.  It  will  be  impossible  to  pre- 
vent the  knowledge  of  his  conduct  from  reach- 
ing Miss  Edelstein's  ears;  it  is  familiar  in  all 
business  circles  where  his  name  is  known. 
Pardon  my  plain  language.  You  desired  to  con- 
sult with  me  on  this  subject.  I  must,  therefore, 
state  rude,  unvarnished  facts,  that  you  may  see 
clearly  with  what  you  have  to  cope. 

"  And  then  next,  and  but  slightly  less  in  im- 
portance, comes  Lawrence  Pleasington,  who  is 
almost  daily  performing  some  feat  of  daring  that 
forces  all  to  sound  his  praises,  and  predict  that 
he  will  win  immortal  laurels.  This,  with  his  un- 
questionably handsome  face,  his  unimpeachable, 
virtuous,  and  temperate  life,  together  with  the 
potent  friendship  of  Col.  Worthington,  are  ob- 
stacles sufficient  to  defy  the  combined  counter- 
acting influences  of  this  city,  brought'  to  bear 
upon  any  young  lady  favorably  impressed  by 
this  young  officer.  How,  then,  with  Effie  Edel- 
stein,  who  was  thus  impressed  before  he  went 
forward  to  mingle  with  danger  and  death?" 

Lady  M :  "  This  is  provokingly  true.     Do 

you  know  that  the  most  embarrassing  feature  of 
the  combined  difficulties  with  me  is  Col.  Worth- 
ington's  strangely  mysterious  fancy  and  friend- 
ship for  that  young  man  ?  You  are  aware  of 
our  relations  with  the  Colonel,  and  his  sensi- 
tive, impulsive  nature.  A  slight  toward  young 
Pleasington  would  be  a  personal  insult  to  Silas 
Worthington. 

"  I  dare  not  assume  the  risk  of  incurring  his 
displeasure :  hence  I  am  forced  in  this  respect  to 
act  a  part,  continually,  that  I  detest — that  of  dis- 
sembling; but  unless  I  wear  a  mask,  I  must  fail, 
and  I  to  fail  am  resolved — never — no.  sir — never! 


"Xo  matter  what  it  costs  me,  Effie  Edelstein 
shall  be  Arnold  Noel's  bride.  As  to  young 
Pleasington,  the  fickle  decrees  of  Fate  will  yet 
doom  him  a  sacrifice  on  his  country's  altar — a 
sad  but  glorious  lot." 

Mortimer  :  "  I  admire  your  courage.  It  is 
idle  to  have  an  object  in  life  unless  we  follow  it 
to  success.  However,  under  all  the  circumstan- 
ces, there  seems  to  me  but  little  more  to  do  ex- 
cept Avatch  and  wait  for  Time  to  render  whatever 
assistance  she  is  pleased  to.  bestow. 

'■'  Pleasington  now  is  fortune's  favorite.  Some- 
times she  smiles  long  upon  a  man,  preserving 
him  through  all  perils ;  then  suddenly  forsakes 
him." 

Lady  M :   "Yes;  and  she  wiU  forsake  him 

in  the  end,  because  his  blind  infatuations  will 
lead  him  to  tempt  her  too  far.  He  seeks,  ever 
seeks,  to  soar  far  beyond  his  natural  sphere. 
His  aspiration  in  the  direction  of  winning  Effie 
is  a  presumptuous  effort  to  ascend  from  the  earth 
to  the  stars.  This  will  eventually  prove  his 
bane.  It  is  this  that  tempts  him  on  to  those 
desperate  feats  of  daring  that  are  making  him 
famous,  and  that  may  yet  wreathe  his  brow  with 
immortal  laurels,  should  his  star  not  set  forever, 
in  the  smoke  and  din  and  thunder  of  battle. 
This  is  the  fate  I  predict  will  be  his. 

"  I  cannot  say  I  wish  him  harm.  I  only  de- 
sire him  to  remain  in  his  own  proper  latitude, 
and  not  interfere  with  my  plans.  Then  I  could 
applaud  his  heroically  acquired  honors  with  as 
much  genuine  and  enthusiastic  zeal  as  any  one  in 
the  land.  But  to  think  of  him  circumventing  the 
long-cherished  and  dearest  anticipations  of  my 
heart — this  is  what  makes  me  *furious — trans- 
forms me  from  his  friend,  yes,  even  patroness,  if 
nece'ssary,  to  the  most  bitter,  vindictive,  relent- 
less mortal  enemy. 

"  Why  is  it  that  those  obscure  vagrant  lads  that 
some  misguided  impulse  causes  men  to  pick  up 
as  they  would  genuine  ash-kittens,  and  send  them 
to  West  Point,  outstrip  all  our  well-bred  lads  in 
every  respect — have  better  morals,  are  hand- 
somer, and  meet  with  greater  favor  and  admira- 
tion in  society  ?  Then  how  provoking  to  think 
that  because  they  are  graduate  officers  in  the 
United  States    army,  a  false  etiquette    compels 


54 


MYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


the  best  society  to  open  its  doors  unto  them. 
There  are  seven  of  them  on  the  floor  now,  that, 
but  for  this  fact,  could  not  put  one  foot  inside  of 
my  yard.  One  thing  redeems  their  obnoxiousness 
to  some  extent — they  are  pohshed  and  gentle- 
manly in  their  manners  and  deportment. 

"  Young  Oglethrop,  a  regular  mountain  igno- 
ramus by  birth  and  breeding,  who  occasionally 
calls  here,  is  a  shining  ornament  in  any  society, 
and  liked  by  everybody;  and,  by  the  Avay,  I 
understand  he  is  eqiyiUy  as  daring  and  venture- 
some as  young  Pleasington.  It  makes  me  wild 
to  reflect  upon  these  facts.  I  am  unable  to  com- 
prehend them." 

Mortimer  :  "  Tliose  lads  are  genuine  children 
of  Nature.  They  are  robust,  well  developed,,  and 
strangers  to  the  degenerate  traits  of  our  city  boys. 
These  simple  aids — indomitable  force  of  virtue  and 
self-reliant  will — have  produced  the  greatest  men 
in  every  sphere  of  life,  in  all  countries  and  ages 
of  the  world,  sprung  from  the  most  obscure  and 
humble  ranks. 

"  Our  wealthy  city  children,  both  boys  and  girls, 
lack  this  force.  They  are  never  educated  to  rely 
upon  themselves.  And  those  who  from  time  to 
time  are  deprived  of  their  supporting  force,  and 
compelled  to  fall  back  on  themselves, — a  shadow 
catches  them, — find  their  hopes  are  placed  on 
broken  reeds. 

"  They  are  utterly  unqualified  and  unable  to  help 
themselves;  and  they  soon  sink  into  oblivion, 
where  they  are  quickly  forgotten  ; — as  their  wealth 
and  social  position,  so  pass  away  their  names 
from  the  remembrance  of  their  former  friends." 

Lady  M :  "  Do  you  knoAV  that  I  am  so  horribly 

oppressed  with  the  bare  thought  of  what  these 
terrible  times  may  bring  to  any  of  us,  that  I  dare 
not  think?  I  am  forced— driven  to  seek  excitement. 
I  often  shudder  at  my  extravagances.  We  have 
an  abundance,  and  a  present  income  to  warrant  a 
large  expenditure ;  but  it  appears  to  me  necessary 
constantly  to  increase  it.  I  cannot  curtail,  nor 
can  I  be  content  to  remain  stationary;  so  I  shut 
my  eyes  as  a  rule,  and  try  not  to  see  the  ajiproach 
of  cloud  or  storm,  and  to  anticipate  only  con- 
tinued prosperity  and  sunshine  throughout  my 
voyage  of  life. 

"Oh!  but  for  these  match-making  vexations 


and  disappointments,  I  should  have  always 
remained  in  tranquil  serenity  and  blissful  happi- 
ness !  But  they  have  become  the  passionate,  all 
controlling  objects  of  my  life:  such  they  will 
remain." 

Mortimer:  "My  dear  Madam,  you  have  the 
'blues,' the  worst  case  I  have  ever  witnessed. 
Come,  let  us  join  in  the  dance,  and  tiiink  on 
more  cheerful  prospects." 

Lady  M :  "  Thank  you.    How  glad  I  am  to 

mingle  in  that  intoxicating  whirl,  and  drown  all 
thoughts  of  the  subjects,  ujjon  which  we  have 
been  dwelling." 

Now,  what  think  you?  Has  she  not  shown 
at  least  the  main  bent  of  her  purpose,  and  that 
she  is  in  course  of  preparation  to  prove  equal  to 
any  emergency,  and  not  to  scruple  about  the 
nature  of  the  intrigue,  so  that  it  facilitates  the 
progress  toward  the  end  which  she  seeks  to  attain  ? 

But  now  enters  Mountjoy  and  Van  Allen  com- 
ing to  the  same  seat. 

Mountjoy:  "I  tell  you.  Van,  the  times  are 
terrible.  Such  festivities  as  these,  considering  the 
state  of  public  affairs,  are  too  gay  and  discordant ; 
but  ladies  are  ladies,  you  know,  and  want 
everything  cheerful  and  bright  around  them; 
and  perhaps  it  may  be  as  well  in  the  end." 

Van  a :  "Yes,  Norman,  I  fear  black  days 

are  coming?  The  horizon  of  the  future  is  overcast 
with  a  portentous  gloom  threatening  dreadful 
storms.  I  tremble  at  the  coming  fate  awaiting 
many  of  our  staunchest  mercantile  barks." 

Mountjoy:  "I  am  unable  to  prevent  the  same 
horrible  dread  from  entering  my  niiud ;  constantly 
it  haunts  me. 

"  We  lost  large  sums  in  the  South.  True,  we 
have  made  most  of  it  up ;  but  the  value  of  money 
is  depreciating — expenses  are  on  the  increase. 

"  The  Southern  people  will  have  privateers 
slaughtering  our  helpless  merchantmen  on  the 
seas.  Should  they  strike  for  several  times 
vessels  bearing  large  invoices  to  the  same 
house,  at  its  own  risk,  this  would  soon  stagger 
the  best  of  us. 

"  I  want  to  haul  in  sail.  It  is  absolutely  the 
duty  of  us  all  to  curtail  and  prepare  for  the  worst ; 
but  I  cannot  do  this  without  mortifying  my 
family.     They  do  not  know  of  my  forebodings 


THE  SENSATION  AT  MOUNTJOY  HOUSE. 


55 


which  by  the  merest  chance  may  not  be  well 
founded.  I  conclude,  therefore,  in  consideration 
of  this  hope,  clutching  as  it  were  at  the  drifting 
straw,  to  take  the  chances  of  their  being  caught 
in  the  worst  fury  of  the  storm,  and  subjected  to 
the  sudden  shock  which  would  engulf  them  with 
the  crashing  Avreck,  rather  than  torture  them  for 
months,  perhaps  years,  with  anticipated  ruin." 

Van  a :  "Ah,   Norman!    that   is  a  great 

trial — I  think,  however,  your  course  is  the  wisest 
you  could  have  taken. 

"  Your  family  forces  have  their  social  battles 
to  fight,  and  cannot  afford  to  wait  until  the 
country  has  finished  hers ;  so  I  think  it  proper 
for  you  to  furnish  all  the  means  they  require. 
After  victory  crowns  their  efforts,  then  you  will 
have  peace  and  tranquillity — a  priceless  boon." 

"Mountjoy:  "Would  to  God  that  boon  was 
mine  now. 

"  I  detest  this  social  match-making,  although  it 
is  the  legacy  of  ages  in  our  family — inculcated 
into  our  minds  almost  as  a  religious  ritual  of  our 
education.  For  this  reason,  I  do  not  meddle 
with  it. 

•'  These  girls  of  ours  are  not  proper  mates  for 
old  men.  And  young  Noel,  would  he  not  be  a 
companion  for  Effie  ?  You  know  he  is  unworthy 
to  be  her  footman ;  but  he  is  Helen's  idoL  She 
is  blind,  and  cannot  see  his  faults. 

"I  would  not  give  the  little  fingers  of  such 
j^oung  men  as  Pleasington  and  Oglethrop  for  a 
Avhole  troop  hke  Arnold ;  yet  they  are  obnoxious 
to  Helen.  I  let  her  have  her  way  in  these  mat- 
ters, and  never  cross  her." 

Van  a :     "  Effie  will  never  be  Arnold's 

victim.  She  is  too  smart,  and  too  much  influ- 
enced by  Col.  Worthington." 

Mountjoy:  "I  try  to  hope  she  will  not,  and 
could  perfectly  rely  upon  this  presumption  tiut 
for  Helen's  indomitable  persistence." 

Van  a :    "  There  comes    Oglethrop,  just 

from  the  front.  He  is  coming  right  here.  Look ! 
They  have  all  spied  him,  and  are  coming  forward 
to  meet  him." 

Mountjoy:  "You  are  right;  that  is  him. 
Look  what  a  noble  brow  and  majestic  mien — a 
soldier  of  fortune." 

CnoRUS  OF  Voices:    "How  do  you  do — how 


are  you,  Lieut.  Oglethrop?  Do  sit  down  and 
tell  us  about  the  army  and  our  friends?" 

Lieut  0 :  "The  army  is  snowed  in,  and 

very  quiet  now.  When  I  left  the  front,  last 
evening,  your  friends  were  well,  and  commis- 
sioned me  to  present  their  compliments  and 
kindest  remembrances  to  all." 

Lady  Mountjoy:  "  Did  you  see  Col.  Worth- 
ington ?" 

Lieut.  0 :    "Yes,    madam,   and   a   pitiful 

phght  he  was  in,  too;  his  one-thousand  dollar 
horse  and  fine  pistol  gone,  and  he  himself  half 
frozen  from  lying  out  all  night  in  the  wilderness, 
in  that  terrible  snow-storm.  I  do  not  think  he 
will  soon  smile  again.  They  treat  him  shamefully 
at  head-quarters;  call  him  Falstaff,  and  insist 
that  he  should  have  brought  off  the  horse." 

All:  "Oh,  shocking!  What  in  the  world. 
Do  tell  us?" 

Lieut.  Oglethrop  here  details  the  mishap  and 
capture  of  Col.  Worthington  as  the  same  hwe 
already  been  detailed  in  a  previous  chapter. 

He  also  describes  the  meeting  of  Cloud  and 
Pleasington  after  the  former  left  Col.  Worthing- 
ton alone  in  the  wilderness,  so  far  as  the  latter 
has  divulged  the  particulars  of  that  affair  to  his 
friends. 

The  Lieutenant  entertains  decided  opinions  as 
to  the  mental  reservations  of  his  young  friend 
and  brother  officer,  and  strongly  intimates  that  a 
mystery  thus  remains  unsolved. 

He  then  continues: 

"  Three  from  my  squadron  came  upon  Cloud  in 
a  position  where  flight  was  impossible.  They 
were  sure  of  his  capture.  He  rushed  upon  them 
like  a  demented  fury.  This  must  have  paralyzed 
them  with  surprise  for  an  instant;  yet  they 
emptied  their  carbines  and  revolvers  at  him. 
How  many  shots  he  fired  they  are  unable  to  tell. 
The  affair  did  not  last  one  minute ;  yet  it  was 
long  enough  for  two  of  them  to  be  shot  out  of 
their  saddles,  seriously  wounded,  and  the  other 
knocked  or  dragged  out  before  he  had  time  to 
-draw  his  sabre  after  discharging  his  fire-arrris. 

*'  In  the  shortest  possible  time,  this  poor  fel- 
low, half  senseless,  yielded  nis  arms  •,  then  under 
the  influence  of  liis  own  sabre,  drawn  in  one 
hand,  and  a  iiresented  revolver  in  the   other,   he 


56 


MYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


unbuckled  the  arms  from  his  wounded  comrades, 
and  hung  them  on  poor  Col.  Worthington's  sad- 
dle ;  tied  the  three  horses  in  a  string,  bridles  and 
tails  together,  and  mounted  the  first. 

"  Up  to  this  time  Cloud  had  appeared  a  raging 
demon;  now  in  the  mildest,  most  sympathetic 
voice,  he  exi)ressed  his  regret  that  he  was  un- 
able to  extend  to  them  the  offices  of  humanity 
which  their  hapless  condition  demanded;  in- 
formed them  that  the  one  able  to  walk  could  find 
assistance  just  over  the  hill,  at  Maj.  Pleasington's 
bivouac;  asked  them  to  tell  the  Major  they  had 
attacked  him,  and  to  send  a  Avhite  flag  after  the 
wounded  man,  and  in  the  twinkhng  of  an  eye 
disappeared  with  his  prisoner  and  booty  ;  this  is 
the  last  reliable  information  about  him. 

"  The  bullets  fired  by  our  boys  rattled  all 
round  the  Colonel 

"  This  so  unstrung  him  that  he  dared  not  move 
all  day.  His  fire  Avent  out.  He  feared  to  re- 
kindle it.  With  the  darkness  it  commenced 
snowing,  and  then  he  could  not  re-light  it.  For- 
tunately he  was  protected  from  the  wind  and 
sheltered  from  the  snow  by  an  overhanging  rocky 
cliff.  He  kept  from  freezing  by  standing  up  and 
stamping  all  night. 

"  At  daybreak  he  moved  out,  and  soon  fell  in 
with  a  party  of  our  cavalry.  He  was  returned  to 
his  quarters  very  much  crest-fallen  and  dejected. 

"  I  think  our  boys  attacking  Cloud  saved  the 
Colonel  from  imprisonment.  Pleasington  says 
he  would  have  been  released.  But  I  dispute  it, 
on  the  ground  that  Cloud  and  party  are  not  in 
the  hal)it  of  releasing  prisoners  who  are  not 
wounded ;  and  this  assertion  is  verified  by  the 
action  he  took  with  regard  to  our  unwounded 
boy." 


Lady  :M- 


'  Oh,   that  is  shockin<. 


W 


don't  some  of  you  put  that  desperado  Cloud  out 
of  the  way  ?" 

LiKUT.   0 :   "  Simph^j  madam,  because  it  is 

catching  before  hanging.  He  lives  inside  of  our 
lines  more  than  half  the  time ;  is  constantly  cap- 
turing our  stragglers,  many  of  whom  are  volun- 
teer officers,  absent  from  their  posts,  seeking  to 
make  love  to  rebel  ladies.  The  instance  just  re- 
lated is  the  only  time  any  of  our  forces  have 
been  able  to  lay  eyes  on  him,  except  as  prisoners ; 


and  this  also  is  the  first  occasion  on  which  he 
has  fired  a  shot  at  any  of  our  troops ;  he  never 
bushwhaclcs,  and  even  as  an  enemy  he  is  bravej 
kind-hearted,  and  magnanimous." 

Lady  M :  ''  I  do  not  consider  his  treatment 

of  Col.  Worthington  magnanimous;  it  would 
shame  brigands  and  ravages." 

Lieut.  0 :  "  The  Colonel  merely  met  an  ill- 
starred  chance  of  war,  and  is  exceedingly  fortu- 
nate that  he  is  not  now  in  prison." 

LadyM :  "How is  it  that  Maj.  Pleasington's 

horse  and  arms  were  not  taken  from  him,  the 
same  as  were  the  Colonel's?" 

Lieut.  0 : "  That  is  a  hard  question.  Pleasing- 
ton  is  as  game  and  daring  as  Cloud.  My  theory 
is  that  he  was  surprised  at  great  disadvantage, 
but  would  not  yield;  and  that,  as  it  was  to 
Cloud's  interest  and.  safety  to  avoid  creating  the 
alarm  which  firing  would  cause,  they  agreed  to  a 
mutual  truce.  Certain  it  is  that  the  advantage,  £ 
there  was  anything  of  the  kind,  was  not  with 
Pleasington.  In  the  Colonel's  case  he  surren- 
dered at  discretion. 

"  This  is  all  the  news  I  have.  Please  let  the 
festivities  proceed." 

Ah !  how  gracefully  that  new  comer  dances ! 
Well !  we  will  look  on,  until  that  seat  is  retaken. 
Here  come  Mr.  Singleton  and  Miss  Cassandra 
to  appropriate  it  now. 

Singleton:  "Miss  Cassa,  are  a^ou  determined 
always  to  remain  indifferent  to  me,  and  receive 
my  jirotestations  with  coldness  ?  When  will  you 
deign  to  consider  my  miserable  lot,  and  bestow 
on  your  devoted  adorer  one  word,  one  look,  even 
one  thought,  as  an  emblematic  token  of  distant 
hoj)e?" 

Miss  C :  "I  have  consid(»red   kindh'  and 

earnestly  all  you  have  ever  said  to  me  on  this 
serious  subject,  and  decided  with  dispassionate 
unselfishness.  What  my  sentiments  and  feelings 
have  been,  or  might  have  been,  are  of  no  conse- 
quence noAV.  Circumstances  over  which  I  exer- 
cise no  degree  of  control,  render  it  utterly  impos- 
sible for  any  relations  ever  to  exist  betAveen  us, 
more  tender  and  sacred  than  those  of  simple 
friendship.  I  have  been,  and  am  still,  willing  to 
continue  your  friend.  More  than  this  I  can 
never  be.     If  you  desire  to  retain  my  friendship. 


THE  SENSATION   AT   MOUNTJOY  HOUSE. 


57 


if  It  is  worth  retaining,  you  will  henceforth 
rcfnxna  from  remotely  broaching  this  subject 
which  to  me  is  one  fraught  with  inexpressible 
I)ain.     They  are  waiting  for  us." 

This  young  gentleman  can  detect  no  consoling 
ambiguity  ni  that  answer,  upon  which  he  may 
found  a  forlorn  hope.  But  here  comes  Mr. 
Atkmson  and  Miss  Beatrice  to  the  favorite 
seat. 

Mr.  a :  "  Have  you.  Miss  Beatrice,  recon- 
sidered the  question  relative  to  fixing  the  date 
f(jr  our  nuptials?  Can  you  name  no  more  deli- 
nite  period  than  'after  the  war,'  as  you 
j)roinised  to.  do  at  our  last  interview?" 

MiSS  B — — :  "  Oh,  yes;  hut  I  have  not  changed 
my  resolution,  Mr.Atkinson.  These  are  not  proper 
times  to  think  of  marriages.  If  the  war  is  long, 
it  IS  better  we  remain  single;  if  short,  why  then, 
the  time  will  the  sooner  become  definite." 

Mr.  a :  "  I  acquiesce  in  your  decision  the 

more  readily  because  I  at  first  agreed  to  that 
arrangement,  and  hence  could  not  consistently 
insist  that  it  be  changed  unless  entirely  agreeable 
to  you.  Now  we  will  discuss  it  no  more;  and  I 
will  anxiously  watch  the  signs  of  the  times,  and 
wait." 

Miss   B :  "Matrimony  is  a  lady's  day   of 

slavery :  the  longer  she  defers  assuming  the 
responsibility  of  this  solemn  obhgation  the 
longer  she  is  free.  But  here  comes  Mr.  String- 
fellow  and  Rosalind  for  this  seat;  it  is  our  turn 
to  dance,  and  they  are  waiting  for  us." 

Stringfellow.  :  "  Well,  Miss  Rosa,  wliat  has 
been  the  final  decision  relative  to  the  happy 
event  of  celebrating  the  double  ceremony  in 
which  it  is  our  blissful  anticipation  to  partici- 
pate ?  " 

Miss  R.  :  "After  the  close  of  the  war,  Mr. 
Striugfellow,  just  as  soon  as  peace  is  fully 
assured.  Don't  you  think  that  is  rushing  things 
with  a  yeugeanca?  I  contended  for  a  grace  of 
one  season,  so  we  could  enjoy,  untrammeled, 
the  gay  and  festive  celebrations  of  peace; 
but  Beatrice  would  not  hear  to  it;  and 
mother  supported  her  —  which  decided  the 
matter." 

"Stringfellow:  "I  was  selfish  enough  to 
hope  the  time   would  have  been  more   definitely 


fixed,  and  not,  at  what  now  appears  in  all  prolj- 
ability,  so  distant  a  period." 

Miss  R :   "And  you  then  wished  to  hasten 

matters  more  ?  Why,  Mr.  Stringfellow,  I  am 
amazed  at  the  idea!  It  is  too  bad  that  I  did 
not  know  this  sooner.  But  the  information  now 
comes  too  late.  The  decree  is  recorded  and 
stands  irrevocable.  But  they  are  waiting  for 
us ;  and  here  comes  Evalina  with  her  gallant 
cavalier  for  this  seat." 

Lieut.  Oglethrop:  "Miss  Eva,  everything 
here  to-night  is  bewitching  and  fascinating.  It 
is  like  a  transformation  scene  of  the  Celestials 
suddenly  emei-ging  from  the  wide  waste  of  grim 
terrors,  compared  with  the  scenes  in  iny  daily 
life  and  experience,  sometimes  in  the  tented,  but 
oftener  in  the  untented,  field.  Thus  not  unfre- 
cpiently  alone  at  night,  riding  along  from  one 
picket  to  another  in  impenetrable  darkness, 
through  a  dreary  wilderness,  with  no  sound 
disturbing  the  awful  silence,  save  the  doleful, 
lugubrious  notes  of  the  owl, — that  solitary,  dis- 
cordant, desolate,  echo-conjurmg  bird  of  dismal 
gloom." 

Miss  M :  "  It  must  be  terrible.  I  sympathize 

with  you,  and  often  think  about  the  dreadful 
dangers  you  face.  I  hear  sometimes,  through 
Effie,  Col.  Worthington,  or  the  newspapers,  how 
you  and  Maj.  Pleasington  court  appahing  dan- 
gers and  tempt  fate.  I  fear  some  heart-rending 
news  will  come  some  day  to  your  friends, — reflec- 
tions which  make  me  shudder." 

Lieut.  0 :    "Thanks,    Miss    Eva,    for   the 

compliment  conferred,  by  bestowing  so  much  as 
a  passing  thought  on  a  poor  soldier-boy  doomed 
to  rely  upon  his  sword  as  his  only  sure  and  con- 
stant friend.  It  is,  therefore,  the  more  comfort- 
ing and  priceless  consolation  to  know  from  your 
own  lips, — which  I  am  sure  the  voice  of  flattery 
never  tarnishes, — that,  even  in  your  walks  of  life, 
my  poor  services  to  my  distracted  country  are 
appreciated,  and  that  my  safety  sometimes 
engrosses  the  mind  of  one  so  fair  and  socially 
elevated  as  yourself." 

Miss  E :   "  You  are  mistaken  in  supposing 

that  your  sword  is  your  only  constant  friend. 
You  have  many  true  friends  here  this  evening, 
who  regard  you  as  the  equal  of  any  one  in  the 


58 


IVIYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


land ;  and  who  possess  the  good  sense  to  know 
that  a  few  dollars  do  not  measure  the  merit,value 
and  social  position  of  men  in  these  dark  and 
trying  times." 

Lieut.  O :  "Oh  Miss  Eva,  you  overwhelm 

me  with  compliments  that  I  am  unable  to  ac- 
knowledge appropriately.  If  it  would  at  all  inter- 
est you,  I  will  send  you  once  or  twice  a  month 
a  journal  embodying  an  account  of  the  most 
striking  occurrences  that  come  under  my  obser- 
vation. I  oflfer  this  in  recognition  of  my  deep 
and  unutterable  appreciation  of  your  kind  expres- 
sions, but  for  which  I  should  not  think  of  daring 
so  much  presumption.  As  a  matter  of  course,  I 
should  not  expect  you  to  acknowledge  their 
receipt." 

Miss   E :    "Oh,   Lieutenant,  a    thousand 

thanks  for  this  flattering  consideration,  which  I 
eagerly  accept!  I  shall  look  forward  to  the  com- 
ing letters  with  anticipations  of  real  pleasure, 
knowing  they  will  prove  genuine  treasures  replete 
Avith  rare  and  thrilling  interest.  Please  inclose, 
and  direct  them  to  Effie.  I  will  promptly  return 
my  acknowledgment  of  the  receipt  of  each 
highly-prized  compliment." 

Lieut.  0 :  "I  trust  their  nature,  when  you 

receive  them,  may  not  prove  a  sad  disappoint- 
ment. By  the  way,  Mr.  Noel  appears  to  be  pro- 
gressing in  favor  with  Miss  Eflie." 

Miss  E :  "  Seems  to  be  is  all.    Everybody, 

except  poor  wild  Arnold  and  mother,  knows  that, 
heart  and  soul,  Effie  is  devoted  to  Lawrence 
Pleasington.  But  here  comes  the  truant  and 
Effie  to  change  places  with  us ;  our  set  is  waiting 
for  us  now." 

Arnold:  "Miss  Effie,  are  we  not  going  to  be 
better  friends  now,  and  see  each  other  oftener 
than  formerly  ?  " 

Effie:  "Arnold  Noel,  I  think  from  your  con- 
duct, without  further  reference  or  one  particular 
as  to  detail,  which  is  fully  known  to  me,  that 
you  are  determined  we  shall  be  much  worse 
friends,  and  that  very  soon." 

Arnold:  "But  I  am  reforming,  Miss  Effie.  I 
see  the  errors  of  my  wild  ways — mere  bovish 
folly,  you  know — a  weakness  to  which  most  boys 
are  subject." 

Effie:   "  Since  when  has  this  freak  of  reforma- 


tion influenced  you  ?  Since  you  began  to  prepare 
for  this  occasion,  as  you  have  before  prepared  for 
others.  You  are  a  disgrace  to  your  family,  and 
to  every  one  who  stoops  to  recognize  you.  But 
for  the  veneration  v^-hich  I  have  for  your  aunt,  I 
would  not  speak  to  you.  I  am  glad  you  have 
given  me  this  opportunity.  I  pity  you,  and 
would  do  anything  in  my  power  to  save  5^ou,  if 
I  could,  by  reasonable  sacrifices,  exercise  some 
degree  of  influence  over  you.  I  do  not  Avish  to 
incur  your  aunt's  displeasure,  nor  do  I  desire  to 
wound  her  feelings;  but  seriously,  regardless  of 
consequences,  unless  5^ou  continue  in  an  uninter- 
rupted course  of  reformation,  I  shall  never  again 
address  you.  Prove  the  sincerity  of  your  profes- 
sions of  reformation,  and  then  talk  to  me  of 
friendship." 

Arnold  :  "  Oh,  Miss  Effie,  I  Avill  enlist  in  the 
navy  to-morrow  morning,  and  be  on  the  sea  to- 
morrow night,  in  order  to  get  away  from  my  evil 
associations,  and  to  blot  out  the  stain  Avith  Avhich 
they  have  blighted  my  name.  After  that  Avould 
you  again  be  my  friend?  " 

Effie  :  "  I  will  be  j'our  friend  Avhenever  you 
have  proved  yourself  worth}^  of  my  friendship, 
no  matter  hoAv  or  where  you  reform ;  and  my 
daily  prayers  shall  accompany  you  Avherever  you 
go.  Until  then  farcAvell.  The  comjiany  is  pre- 
paring to  break  up,  so  our  intervicAA'  must  end." 

NoAv,  indulgent  readers,  you  have  seen  some 
of  the  actors  Avho  are  to  perform  complex  parts 
in  this  drama.  They  are  noAV  leaving  the  stage- 
the  curtain  is  sloAvly  descending  to  obscure  the 
beautiful  scenery  among  which  they  have  moved 
— perfect  in  its  loveliness  as  the  fairy-tales  the 
poets  tell,  of  mythical  lands  beyond  unknoAvn 
seas. 

But  after  many  days  they  will  reappear.  The 
curtain — enveloper  of  the  mystic  and  the  mys- 
terious,— again  rising,  will  reveal  upon  the  stage 
these  same  interesting  characters,  av1i«  must 
further  disclose  additional  lines  in  Nature's  Avon- 
drous  book.  Each  is  the  architect,  the  author, 
the  embellisher  of  his  or  her  OAvn  peculiar  page. 
As  he  or  she  makes  it,  so  Avill  Ave  faithfully 
render  it. 

If  we  find  that  the  pure  and  exquisitely  per- 
fect colors  thev  first  used  are  becomino:  soiled 


THE  SENSATION  AT  MOUNTJOY  HOUSE. 


59 


and  dim,  and  that  the  magnificent  back-ground 
that  promised  so  much  for  the  future  tracings  of 
the  beautiful  and  the  good,  has  become  soiled  and 
polluted,  we  shall  try  to  remember  the  primeval 
splendors  and  unmeasured  bliss  enjoyed  by  the 
fallen  angels,  and  the  once  unapproachable 
earthly  happiness  of  the  heaven-favored  inherit- 
ors of  that  blessed  Paradise  which  they  forfeited 
and  lost. 

But  these  are  forfeitures — the  doom  of  the 
Eternal,  beyond  the  everlasting  pale  of  redemp- 
tion. So  are  the  destinies  of  our  beautiful  and 
pure,  after  they  have  once  descended  from  their 
Paradise — illuminated  by  the  undimmed  brilliancy 
of  radiant  virtue  and  suffered  that  matchless 
earthly  crown — glittering  with  priceless  gems  of 
honor,  which  decked  their  brows — a  wreath  of 
hallowed  glory,  a  legacy  from  the  immortelles — to 
be  rudely  torn  from  its  wonted  resting-place. 
Then,  after  the  despoiler  places  in  its  stead  his 
own  ignoble  brand,  there  is  no  hope  for  perfect 
restoration  to  that  lofty  eminence  from  Avhich 
they  have  fallen.  But  consumed  continually  by 
devouring  flames  of  despair;  lacerated  con- 
stantly by  the  scourge  of  remorse ;  and,  forever 
groaning  under  the  stings  inflicted  by  an  all-sub- 
duing but  unavailing  regret,  in  sorrow  and  in 
shame,  all  the  days  of  their  lives  must  they  un- 
ceasingly eat  from  that  evil  tree  which  they 
themselves  planted,  the  fruit  of  bitterness  and 
ashes. 

However,  there  is  still  safety  and  hope  for 
thousands  and  thousands  who  have  not  so  far 
forfeited  their  priceless  heritage.  To  these  can 
the  lessons  which  one  by  one  our  tale  unfolds,  be- 
come subject  matter  for  consideration  of  grave 
and  serious  impoi't. 

We  are  slowly,  but  steadily  and  surely,  unroll- 
ing a  chart  of  the  voyage  of  life:  striving  to 
leave  no  dangerous  reefs  nor  treacherous  points 
unindicated  by  clear  and  securely  anchored  buoj^s 
or  head-land  beacon-lights,  as  signals  to  warn 
tlie  mariner  of  his  danger. 

A  close  observer  will  quickly  divine,  as  we 
progress,  where  and  how  the  bark  of  any  one  of 
our  voyagers,  either  unwarily  or  willfully,  first 
touches  the  treacherous  reefs  or  the  dangerous 
rocks,  and  how  it  is  still  further  drawn  on  and 


away  from  the  course  of  duty,   to  which  it  may 
return  no  more. 

Be  jiatient:  the  voyage  is  long;  its  vicissitudes 
and  dangers  are  multitudinous. 

Do  not  look  with  contempt  upon  the  bright 
features  of  our  characters  while  they  are,  meas- 
urably all,  yet  beautiful  and  good,  because  you 
are  satisfied  that  some  of  them  are  destined  for 
shipwreck.  While  they  are  pure  and  honorable, 
they  are  admirable  and  worthy.  Were  none  of 
them  fated  to  perish,  or  rather  too  weak  to  resist 
the  toils  of  the  destroyer ;  and  were  there  no 
others  in  the  world  liable  to  become  victims  to  a 
like  dreadful  doom,  the  necessity  for  lessons  of 
warning  against  such  impending  and  menacing 
dangers,  which  boldly,  almost  defiantly,  threaten 
on  all  sides,  would  not  exist. 

To  cause  the  thoughtless  traveler  to  pause  and 
consider  these  dangers,  as  he  gazes  on  the  wrecks 
that  strew  the  way  on  every  hand,  in  time  to  es- 
cape a  similar  fate,  is  the  object  of  these  labors — 
to  incite  in  the  good  and  the  pure  a  purpose  and 
a  resolve  to  retain  their  jewels — to  show  them 
how  priceless  are  those  little  gems  Avhich  so 
many  lightly  value  and  trifle  with  while  they 
have  them,  and  of  which  they  so  bitterly  bewail 
the  loss  when  they  are  theirs  no  more. 

Take  one  last  lingering  look  at  this  scene  of 
beauty  and  purity  blended  in  such  lovely  har- 
mony, to  retain  an  impression  of  its  exquisite 
splendors,  in  order  to  contrast  them  properly 
with  those  that  are  to  follow  as  its  successors. 
If  they  are  less  bright,  less  pleasing  to  the  eye, 
and  less  appealing  to  the  heart,  we  can  do  no 
more  than  lament  the  shadoAVS  and  the  gloom 
that  have  surrounded  them,  where  we  should  pre- 
fer the  sunlight  of  beauty  and  purity  to  shine 
forevermore. 

Those  of  our  characters  who  may,  perchance, 
long  weather  the  gale  and  breast  the  billoAvs  to  a 
haven  of  safety — nay,  should  but  one  arrive,  par- 
don us  if  we  laud  that  glorious  achievement — will 
Avell  deserve  a  wreath  of  laurel  and  immortelles. 
Those  who  may  go  down  beneath  the  waves  in 
the  fathomless  depths  of  the  sea,  for  them  per- 
mit us  to  weep,  shed  tears  of  contrition  all  we 
can  bestow;  for  we  know,  oh,  how  truly,  the 
nameless  woes  theirbitter  cups  will  have  contained! 


60 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


We  deal  with  the  problem  in  its  carnal  bear- 
ings :  the  thralldom  of  spiritual  penalties  is  the 
minister's  theme.  Our  mission  henceforth  is  to 
contrast  the  fruits  of  good  and  evil  in  this  life. 
We  design  this  as  a  solitary,  grim,  and  ghostly 
sentinel,  to  warn  mariners  of  their  dangers  on 
the  sea  of  sin ;  to  denounce  the  wiles  of  the  de- 
stroyer and  the  wages  of  his  victims,  as  practiced 
and  realized  in  this  world.  We  make  this  sentinel 
cry  aloud,  as  it  were,  until  hoarse  from  excessive 
shouting,  in  a  voice  of  thunder  tones,  to  resound 
above  the  wild  roar  of  the  surrounding  tem- 
pest, echo  and  re-echo,  and  go  on  reverberating 
and  moaning  "Danger!  danger!  Ruin!  ruin! 
ruin !  "  down  through  the  centuries. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 


THE      MOUNTAIN      CA: 


:n. 


"Can  tyrants  but  by  tyrants  conquered  be, 

And  freedom  find  no  champion  and  no  ctiild  : 
Such  as  Columbia  saw  arise  when  she 

Sprung  fortli  a  Pallas  armed  and  undefiled? 
Or  must  such  minds  tse  nourished  in  the  wild. 

Deep  in  unpruned  forests,  'mid  the  roar 
Of  cataracts,  where  nursing  nature  smiled 

On  infant  Washington."  — Byeon. 

"  Full  many  a  gem  of  brightest  ray  serene, 
The  dark  unfathomed  caves  of  Ocean  bear; 
Full  many  a  flower  is  born  to  blush  unseen. 
And  waste  its  fragrance  on  the  desert  air." 

— Thos.  Gkay. 

The  true  romance,  or  drama  of  life,  is  life  itself; 
in  which  mingle  alike  the  prince  on  his  throne, 
and  the  outcast  beggar-lad  crouching  hungry  and 
cold  on  an  unfriendly  stoop,  with  no  other  place 
to  lay  his  little  head.  Both  are  sometimes 
necessary  characters  to  present  a  real  life-scene. 
There  are,  indeed,  few  lives  either  so  humble  or 
so  obscure  that  cannot  at  some  period  furnish 
one  little  chapter  of  thrilling  romance,  making 
an  intensely  interesting  character  in  one  act  of  a 
drama,  if  the  episode  could  only  be  reproduced 
exactly  as  it  occurred  at  the  time. 

Romance  is  by  no  means  always  fiction.  Its 
highest  types  that  have  ever  been  produced  in 
the  world,  had  for  their  foundation  stern,  stub- 
born realities,  true  as  the  pure  gospel.  "Often 
there  is  the  glowing  light  of  genius,  the  bound- 
less treasures  of  feeling    and  the  most  sublime 


lessoits  of  morality  in  the  obscure  walks  and 
lowly  lives  of  the  humblest  peasant,  the  soUtary 
wagoner,  or  the  lonely  shepherd." 

For  these  simple,  yet  powerful  and  irrefutable 
reasons,  the  stern  and  sometimes  pitiless  lessons 
of  this  drama  will  often  be  found  with  the  most 
intensified  and  thrilling  romance  entwined  about 
them. 

It  is  often  simply  incredible  how  the  lives  of 
different  persons,  apparently  without  either  com- 
mon bond  or  mutual  sympathy  between  them, 
are  influenced  and  controlled  by  one  another; 
— how  an  idle  word,  spoken  without  the  slightest 
motive  at  the  moment  it  was  uttered ;  how  the 
most  trivial  act,  performed  under  the  influence  of 
spontaneous  impulse ;  and  how  a  casual,  purely 
accidental  meeting  with  a  stranger,  changes  the 
whole  bent  and  current  of  lives.  How  myste- 
riously strange  and  incomprehensibly  true  are 
the  means  by  which  actors  who  have  never 
known,  or  even  heard  of,  one  another,  are  drawn 
together;  andwithout  any  mutual  compact  or  con- 
cert of  purpose,  prosecute  in  perfect  harmony 
each  a  requisite  part  tending  to  produce  one  final 
and  accordant  result,  which  they  did  not  design 
nor  desire.  Are  not  many  such  incidents  often 
romantic  ? 

Now  we  are  away  in  the  wild,  bleak,  desolate 
mountains — a  gap  in  a  branch  of  the  Blue  Ridge 
chain,  which  we  gazed  upon  at  a  distance  of  thirty 
miles,  one  bright  May  morning,  from  the  point 
where  the  actors  in  our  first  scene  Avere  gathering. 

The  forests  are  nude  and  dreary.  "There  is 
not  a  flower  on  all  the  hills,"  and  the  earth  is 
draped  in  a  deep  mantle  of  driven  snow.  The 
Uttle  brooklets,  which  ripjjled  so  transparently 
and  murmured  so  sweetly  then,  are  solidly  bound 
in  the  icy  embrace  of  winter's  fettering  chain. 

Never  at  any  time  is  this  rude,  Avild  region — 
always  replete  with  rugged  Nature's  fantastic 
and  weird  scenes — so  inhospitably  uninviting  as 
on  a  day  like  this.  Blinding  clouds  of  fine  snow 
are  driven  before  the  sweeping  blasts  of  the 
howling  Avind.  Not  a  track  of  the  proAvling 
beasts  of  prey  which  inhabit  these  neighboring 
mountain  fastnesses,  is  anywhere  to  be  seen :  they 
do  not  venture  out  from  their  lairs. 

The  primogenitive  peasants  stay  closely  beside 


THE  MOUNTAIN  CABIN. 


61 


the  broad  log-fire  in  their  one-story,  one-roomed 
primitive,  half-camp,  half-cabin  huts.  From  time 
immemorial  have  their  ancestors  thus  lived — it 
would  be  sacrilege  to  depart  from  the  custom. 

In  every  respect  their  lives  are  blameless. 
They  are  temperate  in  all  things;  believe  the 
Bible,  and  fear  God.  Their  churches  are  the 
same  as  were  God's  first  temples — situated,  even 
until  this  present  day,  in  a  dense  grove  of  stately 
oaks,  maples  and  hickories,  buried  deep  in  an 
untamed  virgin  forest,  often  more  than  a  mile 
from  any  human  habitation.  Under  the 
friendl}^  branches  of  those  grand  old  trees  the 
rude  benches — made  from  saplings  of  chestnut — 
wood  split  open,  and  the  sphnters  smoothed  off 
by  a  hand-ax — are  arranged.  Their  earthly  wants 
are  few.  In  their  frugal  dwelling-places  luxuries 
are  unknoAvn ;  yet  incredible  degrees  of  comfort 
are  there  found. 

Any  one  who  has  passed  through  these  wild 
regions,  and  called  for  a  bite  to  eat  at  one  of 
these  humble  abodes,  expecting  a  rough  crust 
of  corn-bread,  will  readily  recall  the  sensation 
of  agreeable  surprise  experienced  at  finding  a 
really  excellent,  palatable  and  varied  meal. 

These  sirnpie  cnildren  of  the  mountain  forest 
are  healthy  as  their  herds  of  swine  which  roam 
the  wilds,  and  almost  as  hardy.  They  are  robust, 
weH-developed  and  athletic.  The  girls  have  cheeks 
decked  with  the  hues  of  the  full-blown  rose,  and 
are  extremely  modest  and  bashful. 

These  people  reap  the  promised  reward  of 
pure,  temperate,  virtuous,  well-spent  lives  with 
large  interest.  As  a  rule,  they  live  to  ages  rang- 
ing from  eighty  to  ninety  years;  and  many  of 
them  see  the  frosts  and  hear  the  wailing  winds 
of  a  hundred  wmters,  before  they  go  to  their 
long  and  peaceful  slumbers,  Avith  their  consciences 
clear  and  the  implicit,  confiding  faith  of  a  little 
child,  to  sleep  the  sleep  of  the  innocent  in  their 
narrow  cells  on  the  cloud-capped  summit  of  their 
native  mountain. 

Before  the  shrill,  harsh  notes  of  the  trumpet  of 
war  disturbed  the  even  tenor  of  their  humble 
and  peaceful  lives,  pure,  devoted  emotional  love, 
and  true  genuine  happiness,  such  as  may  rarely 
be  found  in  mansions  of  wealth,  reigned  supreme 
in  the  home-circles  of  these  obscure  and  simple 
mountaineers. 


But  with  the  war,  wails  of  distress  were  heard 
from  out  these  mountain  coves,  where  formerly 
only  songs  of  gladness  had  resounded. 

Decendants  from  Revolutionary  veterans, 
adorers  of  Virginia,  their  mother — these  zealous 
sons  of  Liberty,  as  soon  as  the  foot  of  a  foeman 
was  heard  tramping  on  their  native  soil,  rushed 
to  the  front,  old  and  young,  almost  to  a  man,  leav- 
ing their  section  depopulated  of  able-bodied  male 
inhabitants.  So  universally  was  this  true  that  many 
families  were  left  without  a  male  member ;  and 
scarcely  any  had  one  between  the  ages  of  six- 
teen and  fifty  years. 

It  is  easier  to  imagine  than  to  describe  the  pri- 
vations and  sufferings  to  which  many  such  families 
are  exposed  in  this  cold  and  cruel  weather. 

We  are  at  a  cabin — or  rather  climbing  over  snow- 
drifts, and  emerging  from  a  deep  and  rugged  rav- 
ine, toward  it — to  secure  shelter  until  the  weather 
becomes  more  favorable.  The  cabin  outside  has 
much  the  same  appearance  as  those  of  the  better- 
to-do  classes  all  through  this  section.  There  is 
a  chicken-coop ;  a  little  out-building  called  a 
"  smoke-house;"  because  in  this  the  meat  used  by 
the  family  is  kept,  and  smoked  to  bacon ;  a  corn- 
crib  ;  a  milk-house,  just  below  the  bold  mountain- 
spring;  a  pig-pen  and  a  stable;  a  pony  and  a 
cow  in  the  stable  ;  and  a  feAV  cattle  and  sheep  on 
the  lee-side,  seeking  some  shelter  from  the  cold 
and  pitiless  wind.  There  is  a  fine  orchard  of  vari- 
ous fruit-trees,  and  a  handsome  little  vineyard 
clustering  round  the  cabin. 

While  we  are  yet  quite  a  distance  away,  we 
see  a  sleigh  drive  rapidly  up  to  the  gate,  a  young 
girl  descend  from  it,  and  go  lightly  tripping  into 
the  cabin,  Avhile.  the  sleigh  turns  and  dashes 
rapidly  back  in  the  direction  from  whence  it 
came. 

We  soon  tap  at  the  door,  which  is  opened  by  a 
meek,  sweet-faced  lady  not  past  the  middle- 
age,  and  strangely  beautiful,  despite  the  clearly 
defined  traces  of  care  which  are  deeply  imprinted 
on  her  features.  With  an  air  of  refinement  and 
a  dignity  of  manner  which  unmistakably  indicate 
a  degree  of  high-breeding  that  causes  us  a  thrill 
of  astonishment,  she  welcomes  and  presents  us  a 
seat  in  front  of  a  cozy  fire  of  hickor3^  She  seats 
herself  at  one  corner-place  of  the  hearth.     The 


02 


MYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


young  girl  ju8t  mentioned  is  warming  her  pretty 
little  self  at  the  other  corner. 

There  is  no  other  human  being  visible  about 
the  tidy  little  premises,  which  present  a  comfort- 
able, home-like  appearance,  and  are  scrupulously 
clean,  neat,  and  tastefully  arranged.  The  occu- 
pants are  mother  and  daughter. 

Mother  :  "  Eosalia,  why,  in  mercy's  name,  did 
you  come  home  on  a  day  like  this?  I  was  not 
expecting  you." 

Rosalia:  "Mother,  I  could  not  think  of  ^^r-j- 
ing  away  from  you  another  hour,  and  the  weather 
growing  w^orse;  on  your  account  they  were  anx- 
ious to  send  me  before  the  roads  and  country  are 
entirely  impassable." 

Mother  :  "  You  are  a  good  dear  child,  Rosalia, 
to  brave  such  a  snow-storm  to  come  home  to 
mother.  True,  darling,  the  roads  may  all  be 
blocked  and  impassable  by  to-morrow." 

Rosalia:  "Oh,  mother!  I  must  tell  you  about 
3'esterday.     We  went  away  up   nearl3r  to    the 

Mountain  Meadows,  to  Captain  K 's  funeral. 

He  was  killed  last  week  in  a  skirmish  somewhere 
out  West,  and  they  sent  him  home  to  his  poor 
wife  and  children,  to  be  buried.  He  was  cousin 
to  the  Clouds.  How  my  heart  bled  for  his  wife 
and  children  !     Their  grief  was  wild  and  pitiful. 

"  The  church  was  crowded  until  there  was  no 
standing-room,  and  people  built  fires  outside. 

"  Col.  Cloud,  G-arland's  father,  was  there  with 
his  arm  in  a  sling,  from  the  wound  which  we  heard 
he  received.  His  daughters,  Virgie  and  Hattie, 
were  there.  They  never  saw  me  before;  but, 
broken-hearted  as  they  were  from  grief  for  their 
dead  cousin,  they  came  straight  to  me,  kissed  me, 
and  said  they  were  going  away  to  Beaver  Mount- 
ain to  see  us  just  as  soon  as  the  weather  would 
permit.  The  old  Colonel  came  up  to  me,  and 
held  my  hand  long  and  firmly  pressed  in  his, 
while  two  great  tear-drops  stood  in  his  large 
hazel  eyes,  as  he  gazed  on  me  in  silence,  as 
though  he  was  reading  every  line  in  my  features, 
and  some  stifled  emotion  struggled  in  his  breast, 
until  at  last  he  said:  'Little  girl,  you  are  a 
stranger  to  me,  but  your  brother's  name  I  know 
as  that  of  the  bravest  lad  in  the  army  of  Northern 
Virginia.  I  am  glad  to  meet  the  sister  of  such  a 
noble    soldier-boy,    and    I   want   to  know   his 


mother.  I  intend  to  call  and  see  you  and  her  as 
I  return  to  the  army,  which  will  be  in  a  very  fcAv 
days.'  " 

Just  at  this  point  in  Rosalia's  narration,  there 
is  a  gentle  tap  on  the  little  cabin  door.  The 
mother  hastens  to  re.spond.  On  opening  the 
door,  there  stands  the  beautiful  figure  of  a  ma- 
jestic young  lady,  enveloped  in  rich  furs.  Her 
cheeks  glow,  her  sparkling  eyes  flash  with  the 
fire  of  resolution.  She  is  a  fairy-dream  image  of 
beauty.  On  beholding  her,  the  mother  and 
daughter  utter  each  a  sharp  little  scream. 

We  are  stupified  with  amazement,  and  begin 
to  wonder  if  we  are  mingling  in  or  beholding  a 
scene  where  the  angels  congregate.  We  have 
been  in  sight  and  inside  of  the  cabin  only  a  very 
few  moments.  Even  now  we  begin  to  feel  that 
it  is  not  impossible  to  meet  any  other  new  won- 
der, and  that  such  awaiting  to  burst  in  upon  us, 
here  in  this  magical  domain  of  the  unknown, 
should  not  be  regarded  as  at  all  strange. 

Instantly  the  two  fair  hostesses  recover  from 
their  momentary  surprise,  and,  trembling  appar- 
ently with  the  secret  dread  that  this  strange  visit 
forbodes  something  terrible  to  themselves — is 
an  angehc  comfortress  come  with  the  evil  tidings 
which  might  be  brought, — and  with  white  lips 
they  both  simultaneously  but  whisperingly  ex- 
claim : 

"Oh,  Miss  Harman!  what  terrible  occurrence 
has  brought  or  caught  you  in  these  wild  regions, 
safar  from  your  valley  home  in  a  storm  like 
this?  Do  come  quickly  to  the  fire.  You  must 
be  nearly  frozen." 

Miss  Harman:  "I  crave  your  pardon  for  hav- 
ing frightened  you,  ladies.  Calm  your  fears. 
Duty  brings  me  here.  I  bring  no  evil  tidings. 
I  am  seeking  Mrs.  Flowers  and  her  daughter, 
Rosalia.  Are  you  not  these  ladies?  You  seem 
to  know  me,  though  I  do  not  know  you." 

Mrs.  Flowers  :  "  Oh,  yes,  Miss  Harman,  we 
know  you,  and  are  the  ladies  you  seek  .  But 
what,  permit  me  to  wonder,  can  bring  you 
here,  twelve  miles  through  such  terrible  weather 
to  seek  us?" 

Miss  H :   "  The    terrible  weather,  madam, 

and  the  knowledge  that  you  were  two  lone, 
feeble  women,  away  in  this  desolate  mountain, 


TKE  MOUNTAIN   CABIN. 


perhaps  sick,  helpless,  and  destitute,  while  your 
brave  little  son  is  exposing  his  health  and  life, 
away  yonder,  near  the  banks  of  the  Potomac, 
in  this  weather,  defending  old  Virginia  and 
rae. 

"I  have  received  a  mandate  that  I  cannot, 
dare  not  disobey,  to  look  after  his  mother  and 
sister,  and  see  that  they  do  not  suffer  while  he 
is  away.  I  could  not  rest  nor  sleep  peacefully 
until  I  performed  the  duty  of  seeing  you,  so  that 
you  could  write  him  the  comforting  words  of 
assurance  to  cheer  his  brave  heart,  that  mother 
and  little  sister  had  friends  sent  to  them  by  that 
God  whom  he  believes  so  confidingly  will  pro- 
vide for  them. 

"  I  am  organizing  A  Soldiers'  Family  Relief 
Society,  having  for  its  object  the  care  of  soldiers' 
families  in  all  the  mountain  districts  surrounding 
our  valley,  and  expect  to  have  the  cooperation 
of  every  lady  in  my  section.  Thus  can  we  idle, 
worthless  girls  find  employment  and  serve  our 
country.  The  same  voice  that  sent  me  to  you 
commanded  me  to  perform  the  other  duty  of 
organizing  the  society  named.  In  this  service 
nothing  but  sickness  excuses  from  duty.  In- 
clemency of  the  weather  and  lighter  matters  we 
must  not  pause  to  consider. 

"  But,  separate  and  independent  of  the  Society 
and  its  labors,  I  have  taken  it  upon  myself  as  a 
pleasing  individual  duty  to  call  on  you  and  see 
to  your  comfort  and  welfare.  For  this  purpose, 
in  the  name  of  Jesse  Flowers,  the  bravest  of  the 
brave  soldier-boys  am  I  here  to  day ;  and  proud 
am  I  to  have  this  honor,  and  to  know  his 
mother  and  sister,  with  whom  I  hope  to  become 
intimately  acquainted,  and  that  we  may  be  the 
best  of  friends." 

Mrs.  F :  "Oh,  Miss  Harman!  your  kind- 
ness dumbfounds  me.  I  cannot  understand  how 
you  know  so  much  about,  and  why  you  take  so 
great  an  interest  in,  Jesse,  and  praise  his  bravery. 
We  are  hearing  much  about  him,  but  it  all  comes 
from  strangers,  and  not  from  himself  or  his  com- 
rades. He  wrote  that  he  fought  very  hard,  and 
a  great  many  were  killed  near  him  at  Manassas ; 
and  that  was  all.  Now  the  country  is  begin- 
ning to  sound  his  praises.  There  must  be  some 
mistake  about  it." 


Miss  H :   "Not  the  slightest,  madam.     I 

assure  you  it  is  true." 

Mrs.  F :  "  So  far  as  I  know,  the  boy  has 

Ijut  one  true,  devoted  friend  in  the  whole  army, 
outside  of  his  simple,  kind-hearted,  neighbor 
boys.  Garland  Cloud  is  that  friend;  and  we 
hear  he  is  the  boldest  boy  from  these  mountains. 
Are  you  acquainted  with  the  Clouds?" 

Mtss  H :  "  No,  madam ;  I  have  never  met 

one  of  them.  Col.  Cloud  has  already  distin- 
guished himself,  and  been  promoted  three  times 
for  gallant  and  meritorious  services.  The  mount- 
ain people  are  winning  many  laurels." 

Mrs.    F :   "With  reference  to  your  kind 

Christian  mission  here  to  us.  Miss  Harman,  by 
the  goodness  of  God,  we  are  in  a  condition  to  need 
no  assistance  for  a  long  time.  Our  little  crop 
was  excellent.  We  have  received  considerable 
money  from  Jesse  —  all  his  wages,  and  some 
assistance  from  unknown  sources,  that  we  are 
unable  to  understand,  about  which  you  shall 
know." 

"But  your  driver  will  soon  freeze.  I  will  show 
him  where  he  can  put  your  horses  under  a  shel- 
ter; and  tell  the  poor  fellow  to  come  in  to  the  fire, 
as  I  must  detain  you  some  little  time  before  you 
set  out  to  return." 

Miss  H :  "  Thank   you,  madam.     You   are 

very  kind.  I  am  disposed  to  remain  an  hour  or 
two,  as  there  are  many  things  about  which  I  de- 
sire to  talk  with  you." 

[Mrs.  Flowers  pas.ses  out  of  the  room.] 

Rosalia.:  "Excuse  me.  Miss  Carrie,  but 
mother  did  not  tell  you  how  we  knew  you  so 
quickly.  We  have  seen  you  often  at  camp-meet- 
ings, and  also  where  they  were  organizing 
companies  to  go  to  the  war."    . 

Miss  H :  "Yes,  Rosa,  I  remember  you  and 

your  mother  now,  but  never  knew  who  you  were, 
nor  where  you  lived." 

Rosalia  ;  "  Miss  Carrie,  here  is  a  little  old  wine, 
made  from  our  grapes.  It  will  do  you  good  after 
your  long  ride  in  the  storm." 

Miss  H :  "Ah,  Rosa,  this  is  equal  to  the 

finest  champagne.  Did  you  and  your  mother 
make  it?" 

Rosalia.  :  "  Yes,  Miss  Carrie,  we  made  it.  We 
prepare  a  great  many  things  from  our  grapes  and 


04 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


fruit,  that  euablu  us  to  subsist;  and  we  like 
them." 

Miss  II :  '"You  have  not  always  lived  hero, 

or  at  least  you  have  been  away  at  school,  have 
you  not  ?  " 

PiOSALi.v:  "^^'e  have  lived  in  this  cabin  since 
before  I  was  a  child  less  than  a  year  old.  Jesse 
and  I  have  been  to  no  school  never  a  single  day 
in  ovir  lives.  Mother  taught  us  all  Ave  know. 
She  graduated  when  she  was  a  girl;  has  been  a 
lady  in  her  day,  Avith  all  the  wealth  that  heart 
could  wiah. 

"  She  saved  a  great  many  valuable  books,  which 
have  been  her  only  companions  in  many  a  sad 
and  lonely  hour  while  Jesse  and  I  were  growing 
up,  and  since,  when  we  are  sometimes  away 
from  her.  Slie  has  taught  us,  from  the  time  Ave 
first  began  to  speak,  French,  German,  Italian  and 
Spanish,  until  now  each  language  is  as  familiar  to 
us  as  the  English.  She  also  taught  us  to  trust  in 
God,  and  to  believe  that  in  His  own  good  time 
He  Avould  remove  the  shadows  and  clouds  from 
our  patliAvay;  and  that  someday,  in. the  far  fu- 
ture, Ave  Avould  walk  in  the  bright  sunshine  of 
life,  and  fdl  useful  positions  in  the  Avorld.  Thus 
have  we  groAvn  up  and  lived  to  what  you  see  and 
knoAV  of  us  now.  HoAvever,  Ave  have  been  quite 
as  happy  and  comfortable  as  the  majority  of  our 
poor  neighbors.  These  people  are  very  good  and 
kind  to  us. 

"  Mother  has  taught  their  children,and  crocheted 
fancy  work  for  the  girls.  They  have  paid  her  in 
work,  honey,  flour  and  many  other  things  that 
helped  her  along.  The  old  hunters  frequently 
send  us  some  choice  pieces  of  the  game  they  kill. 
Mother  noAv  has  a  piece  of  bear  baking  and  some 
venison  cooking. 

"  Those  kind-hearted  old  men  often  come  to  hear 
Jesse's  letters  and  the  paper  read,  and  take  a 
meal  with  us.  Mother  occasionally  writes  some- 
thing for  a  Richmond  paper,  and  they  have  sent 
her  a  daily  ever  since  the  commencement  of  the 
Avar." 

Miss  H :   "  Rosalia,  have  I  been  dreaming, 

or  listening  to  a  veritable  romance  of  mountain 
life  ?  To  think  of  the  hidden  treasures,  pictures 
of  real,  pure,  natural  life  buried  here  in  the  re- 
mote recesses  of  these    grand  old  mountains — 


things  for  AA'hieli  Ave  poor,  school-crushed  girls 
of  the  valley  pine  and  ransack  the  libraries  to 
find  in  vain — being,  all  these  years  unknown  to 
us,  Avithin  two  hours'  ride  of  our  doors ! 

"But  concerning  your  mother  before  she  came 
here — how  Avas  her  life  then,  Rosa?  I  am  all 
impatience  to  hear  that  part  of  the  story.  What 
brought  your  mother  from  the  midst  of  fa.=;hion 
and  Avealth,  to  these  wild  and  dreary  shadoAved 
mountains?  " 

Rosalia:  "Here  comes  mother,  Miss  Carrie. 
She  AAnll  tell  you." 

]\fiss  H :  "Mrs.  Flowers,  Rosa  has  been  re- 
lating to  me  something  of  your  experience  in  the 
mountains,  and  that  you  came  here  from  the 
world  of  fashion  and  affluence.  If  agreeable, 
hoAv  delighted  I  should  be  to  hear  something 
about  that  romantic  transition!" 

Mrs.  F :   "  Not  a  word  of  that  until  dinner 

is  over;  then  I  will  recount  it  to  you,  although  it 
carries  me  back  to  memories  fraught  Avith  inex- 
pressible pain. 

"Uncle  Jack,  take  this  seat,  and  Avarm — j^oor 
felloAV,  I  knoAV  your  hands  and  feet  are  nearly 
frozen. 

"Now,  Miss  Harman,  I  am  going  to  give 
you  a  regular  rough-and-ready  mountain  dinner, 
including  some  spoils  from  the  chase,  just  to 
show  you  that  we  are  in  no  immediate  danger  of 
suffering  for  the  necessaries  of  fife.  And  Avhile 
I  am  preparing  the  rude  repast,  I  wish  to  com- 
plete my  statement,  explaining  why  we  do  not 
noAv  require  assistance,  in  order  that  you  may 
understand  fully  that  we  are  not  actuated  by  a 
false  pride  when  telling  you  that  Ave  need  no 
aid,  because  I  realize  that  the  day  may  come 
Avhen  we  Avill  sadly  require  it." 

Miss  H :   "  I  am  proud  to  have  the  honor, 

Mrs.  Flowers,  of  dining  Avith  a  realistic  living 
heroine ;  for  this,  I  am  sure  you  are, — that  ideal 
type  of  the  heroine  which  I  was  persuaded  had 
never  existed  in  the  world,  was  a  mere  mythi- 
cal creation  coined  in  the  fertile  brain  of  vision- 
ary authors.  And  I  am  inexpressibly  pleased 
to  find  you  in  a  condition  to  need  no  help 
now  ;  and  hope  and  trust  you  may  so  remain.  I 
shall  listen  Avith  deep  interest  to  what  you  say 
in  explanation  r-elative  to  this    cheerful  feature 


THE  MOUNTAIN  CABIN. 


65 


of  your  present  condition,  from  now  until  dinner 
is  over ;  and  will  not  disturb  you  until  your  narra- 
tive is  completed." 

Mrs.  F :  "  Well,  in  the  first  place.  Miss  Har- 

nian,  Jesse  has  been  supplied  with  an  overcoat, 
blanket,  boots,  underclothing — in  fact,  everything 
he  needed,  through  the  instrumentality  of  Gar- 
land Cloud.  This  enables  Jesse  to  send  us  all 
his  pay.  Then  again  we  have  received  several 
small  anonymous  sums — nearly  two  hundred 
dollars  in  all, — within  the  last  four  months, which 
fact  has  caused  me  no  httle  anxiety,  as  I  was 
entirely  unable  to  conjecture  the  source  whence 
it  came,  or  for  what  reason  it  was  sent." 

"  Moreover,  to  cap  the  climax  of  my  bewilder- 
ing astonishment,  last  week  these  two  letters  and 
the  articles  referred  to  in  them  reached  us. 
Eead  them,  please,  and  see  if  you  can  advance  a 
theory  that  will  solve  this  strange  mysterj^, 
which  to  me  is  so  truly  incomprehensible.  Read 
them  aloud,  please,  that  I  may  hear  them  one 
time  in  a  new  voice." 

'"New  York,  Dec.  25,  1861. 
"  '  Mrs.  Gertrude  Flowers, 

" '  Beaver  Mountain,  Va. 
'"  Jiac?aTO.• 
"  '  As  a  token  of  my  gratitude  and  appreciation 
for  the  kindness  of  your  son  Jesse  in  aiding  to 
save  the  life  of  a  wounded  United  States  officer  5t 
the  battle  of  Manassas, — a  very  near  and  very  dear 
friend  of  mine, — I  beg  that  you  will  deign  to  ac- 
cept from  an  unknown  Northern  girl,  the  articles 
inclosed  in  the  package  to  be  found  in  the  ac- 
companying box,  marked  with  your  name — they 
are  for  you.  The  one  with  Rosalia's  name  is  for 
your  daughter. 

"  '  I  trust  the  articles  may  reach  you  in  safety, 
and  be  serviceable  to  you  in  these  deplorable 
times ;  and  that  your  good  son  may  be  spared  to 
you.  I  am,  madam,  with  sincere,  heart-felt  grat- 
itude, "  '  Very  respectfully, 

'"Effie  Edelstein.'" 


"  'Washington,  D.  C,  Dec.  25,  1861. 
'"Mrs.  Gertrude  Flowers. 

"  ^ Madam: 
"  '  Inclosed  are  five  hundred  dollars  in  sterling 
bills,  for  yourself  and  daughter,  sent  in  acknowl- 


edgment of  my  gratitude  for  the  kindness  of 
your  son,  in  aiding  to  save  my  dearest  friend's 
life  at  the  battle  of  Manassas, 

" '  Respectfully, 

'"Silas  Worthington.'" 


Miss  H :    "  What  has  Jesse  written  you  in 

relation  to  this  matter  ?  " 

Mrs.  F :  "Never  a  word.  We  have  writ- 
ten to  him  abouf  it  since  these  letters  were 
received.  He  answered  that  he  aided  in  caring 
for  the  wounded  nearly  all  night  after  the  battle 
at  Stone  Bridge." 

Miss  H :  "  Did  he  mention  any  other  per- 
sons by  whom  he  was  assisted  in  that  work  ?  " 

Mhs.  F :   "Oh,  yes!— Garland  Cloud." 

Miss  H :  "  Then  I  can  probably  solve  this 

mystery.  Doctor  Chamberlain,  when  he  was  at 
home,  told  us  about  a  Lieut.  Pleasington,  of  the 
Northern  army,  who  was  brought  off  the  field  to 
him  in  a  very  critical  condition  by  young  Cloud 
and  a  companion ;  and  that  he  had  never  before 
witnessed  such  intense  gratitude  as  this  young 
officer  had  manifested  to  those  young  men  while 
they  were  with  him,  and  in  relation  to  them  after 
they  were  gone.  The  doctor  took  a  great  fancy 
to  this  young  foeman,  and  interested  himself  in 
having  him  paroled  and  sent  home.  The  parties 
sending  you  these  tokens  of  gratitude  are,  un- 
doubtedly friends  of  that  young  man ;  perhaps 
the  young  lady  is  more  than  a  friend.  However, 
be  this  as  it  may,  here  is  unmistakable  evidence 
of  a  gratitude  far  beyond  anything  I  have  ever 
heard  or  read." 

Mrs.  F -:  "That  is,  in  iJl  probabihty,  the 

true  explanation,  and  all  that  I  shall  doubtless  ever 
obtain.  Jesse  has  thought  this  incident  too  un- 
important even  to  mention  it.  But  look  what 
wonderful  results  that  little  seed  of  kindness,  cast 
out  by  hazard  upon  the  wild  waste  of  human 
appreciation — from  which  so  little  gratitude  ever 
springs — by  striking  a  moist,  rich  spot  in  the  arid 
sterile  desert,  has  produced  for  his  lonely,  hum- 
ble little  home.  Such  results  the  poor,  poor  boy 
could  not  have  attained  by  the  sweat  of  his  brow 
and  the  labor  of  his  hands  in  two  long  and 
tedious  years." 

Miss  H :    "  Now,  Mrs.  Flowers,  please  do 


GG 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


for  favor  to  tell  me  how  you  luive  become  pro- 
ficient in  the  making  of  these  nice  butters,  jellies, 
preserves,  wines  and  other  things.  We  are  igno- 
rant of  the  secrets  of  this  fine  art,  much  as  we 
have  studied  and  practiced  it." 

Mrs.  F ■:   "I  learned  it  from  my  husband, 

my  father,  and  from  original  formulas  in  old 
French  books  which  I  have.  Mr.  or  Gen.  Flow- 
ers, my  father-in-law,  was  a  great  utilizer  of 
fruits  and  grapes,  and  was  a  perfect  master  of 
the  art. 

"  He  sprung  from  a  noble  French  family,  served 
under  La  Fayette  in  the  Revolutionary  War,  and 
was  a  general  in  the  war  of  1812-14.  After  we 
were  married,  his  son  and  I,  we  spent  consider- 
able time  with  the  old  gentleman.  •  Although  he 
was  very  old  and  feeble,  he  prided  himself  upon 
personally  superintending  the  productions  of  his 
orchards  and  vineyards;  and  took  special  pains 
to  initiate  me  in  the  secrets  of  the  art,  which  he 
said  might  some  day  be  serviceable  to  me,  should 
the  dark  wing  of  misfortune  spread  its  unfriendly 
shadow  over  my  head.  He  spoke  thus  in  a  seri- 
ous tone,  and  always  with  visible  emotion. 
Prophetic  words !  But  dear,  devoted  old  man, 
he  had  passed  serenely  over  the  deep  waters  of 
the  dark  river — he  did  not  stay  to  endure  the 
torture  of  seeing  them  fulfilled.  Miss  Harman, 
you  will  excuse  my  weakness — the  tears  will 
come." 

Miss  H :   "  Weep,  my  poor  sister,  weep ! 

Those  are  sacred  drops — the  tears  of  gratitude 
and  devotion.  Better,  far  better,  for  other  un- 
feeling, unthinking  hearts,  were  their  eyes  of  tener 
dimmed  by  the  same  moisture.  My  unworthy 
heart  bleeds  for  you.  It  seems  that  I  have  gained 
the  experience  and  knowledge  of  an  age  in  the 
one  little  hour  that  it  has  been  my  good  fortune 
to  be  under  your  roof. 

"  I  fear  the  task  will  be  too  great,  the  sacrifice 
more  than  you  ought  to  make,  to  complete  your 
narrative,  which  I  perceive  is  bitterly  painful." 

Mrs.  F :  "  No,  Miss  Harman  I  will  com- 
plete it.  It  may  contain  a  lesson  worth  even  your 
consideration.  I  am  stronger  now.  I  will  not 
break  down.  Dinner  is  over,  and  if  you  are 
ready  to  listen,  I  will  proceed." 

Miss  H :   "  I  am  very,  very  anxious  to  hear 


it.  I  shall  listen  with  deep  interest  and  sym- 
pathy." 

AIrs.  F :  "I  liave  already  sufficiently  de- 
tailed the  history  of  my  father-in-law.  I  will  but 
add  that  he  had  accumulated  quite  a  fortune ;  that 
he  had  an  only  son,  and  no  other  blood  kins- 
man in  America.  This  son,  Jesse,  was  a  graduate 
of  West  Point,  and  also  has  been  trained  by  a 
large  old  New  York  firm  for  a  merchant. 

"On  the  breaking  out  of  the  Mexican  War  he 
joined  the  army,  and  filled  an  important  office 
with  bravery  and  distinction  throughout  the 
entire  conflict. 

"  I  was  left  an  orphan  when  two  years  old; 
the  yellow  fever  carried  away  my  parents  in  one 
day.  I  was  their  only  child,  and  an  heiress  to 
an  immense  estate  in  Louisiana.  I  was  raised 
and  educated  with  great  care  by  my  grandfather, 
who  died  when  I  was  still  young.  He  left  me 
another  fortune. 

"  After  this  I  went  to  New  Orleans  to  live  with 
the  family  o'f  a  dear  friend  of  grandfather's.  I 
met  Col.  Flowers  there,  on  his  Avay  home  from 
Mexico.  It  was  a  case  of  mutual  love  at  first 
sight,  resulting,  young  as  I  was,  in  a  speedy 
marriage. 

"  For  tAvo  years  we  divided  our  time  about 
eciually  between  my  Southern  estates,  where  we 
spent  the  winter,  and  his  father's  Northern  home», 
where  we  passed  the  summer.  At  the  end  of  this 
time  the  old  gentleman  died. 

"  Then  we  sold  both  estates,  and  made  our  home 
in  New  York,  where  he  entered  the  wholesale 
trade  with  two  old  merchants,  or  rather  men  who 
had  spent  their  days  in  that  business,  although 
they  were  not  then  very  old.  Their  names  were 
Ira  Atkinson,  and  Adam  Stringfellow,  and  that 
of  the  firm,  Atkinson,  Flowers  &  Co.  With  the 
trade  and  experience  these  two  men  already  pos- 
sessed, added  to  the  large  amount  of  money  which 
Col.  Flowers  carried  into  the  firm,  the  business 
soon  grew  to  prodigious  proportions,  unsurpassed 
by  any  other  house  in  the  same  line. 

"  The  second  year  we  were  in  New  York  my 
health  failed,  and  we  decided  that  it  was  best  I 
should  go  to  the  Sulphur  Springs,  just  beyond  Elk 
Mountain. 

"  On   our  journey  by  rail,  I  became   greatly 


THE  MOUNTAIN   CABIN. 


67 


exhausted ;  but  we  proceeded  at  once  in  a  car- 
riage. When  we  arrived  at  this  very  cabin,  I 
could  go  no  farther.  Col.  Flowers  called  at  the 
cabin.  I  was  taken  in  without  one  moment's 
hesitation — in  fact  the  place  was  virtually  aban- 
doned to  us;  although  the  good  man.  ^filton  Land, 
and  Emma,  his  wife^  remamed  to  wait  on  us.  She 
cared  for  little  Jesse,  and  nursed  me  like  a  mother. 
I  never  can  forget  that  angelic  face  bending  over 
me,  nor  her  ten:ider,  sympathetic  voice,  which 
then  sounded  sweeter  and  more  melodious  to  my 
ear  than  the  most  rapturous  music  I  had  ever 
heard. 

"  The  tenth  morning  I  was  much  better.  I 
thought  then  the  water  from  that  grand  old 
spring  surpassed  the  most  delicate  nectars  in 
the  world ;  and  that  tho  soft,  ripe  peaches  and 
cream  brought  forth  from  out  that  stone  spring 
house,  excelled  all  the  dainties  I  had  ever  tasted. 

"  That  evening  I  was  able  to  continue  the 
journey. 

*'  Those  people  would  neither  accept  one  cent 
of  compensation  nor  receive  any  sort  of  present 
from  our  hands;  and  they  actually  manifested 
strong  indignation  when  we  endeavored  to  insist. 
The  Colonel  took  their  address;  and  we  parted 
with  the  young  couple,  who  were  then  only  a  short 
time  married. 

"  In  about  four  months  my  health  was  perfectly 
restored,  and  we  were  back  at  home  in  New 
York.  I  then  sent  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Land  some  pres- 
ents, and  wrote  them  such  a  letter  that  they  could 
not  refuse  to  accept  them.  From  that  time 
I  wrote  to  the  good  little  woman  every  month.  I 
called  her  the  Angel  of  thermountain  and  she  was 
worthy  of  the  name. 

''Col.  Flowers  was  happy,  and  so  was  I; 
more  on  his  account,  however,  than  from  any 
special  fondness  I  cherished  for  the  grand  and 
brilhant  life  which  I  was  leading  in  the  city; 
because  there  was  in  it  and  its  intoxicating 
whirls,  for  me  at  least,  not  one  scintilla  of  true 
enjoyment,  except  that  found  in  the  quietude  of 
my  own  home. 

"I  can  never  forget  one  queen  of  fashion, 
Mrs.  Mountjoy,  who  called  on  me  at  times,  and 
appeared  very  fond  of  me.  Her  beauty  was 
wonderful,    and    her    pride    and    her    ambition 


knew  no    bounds.     In  society  her  will  was  laAV, 
her  rule  despotic. 

"One  fine  morning  in  July,  Saturday,  Col. 
Flowers  and  I  went  to  the  Sea  Beach.  His 
spirits  were  buoyant.  He  was  happiness  and 
contentment  personified.  He  loved  the  sea — 
and  from  a  child  had  sported  at  Avill  on  its 
billows.  This  morning  there  was  a  fine  breeze, 
and  his  heart  was  set  on  having  a  sail.  As  the 
sea  had  always  made  me  sick  in  very  calm 
weather,  whenever  I  had  been  on  it,  even  my 
going  with  him  was  not  mentioned. 

"  When  he  was  ready,  there  chanced  to  be  no 
acquaintance  near  by  for  him  to  invite  as  a  com- 
panion, and  he  set  out  alone,  gay  and  joyous  as 
ever  the  impulsive  Frenchman  enters .  upon  any 
amusement  or  pleasure  which  he  intensely 
relishes. 

""I  watched  him  from  my  window  at  the  hotel, 
and  we  exchanged  signals  by  waving  our  white 
handkerchiefs  as  the  little  boat  sped,  on  its  Avay 
before  the  fair  and  stiffening  breeze,  until  it 
appeared  a  mere  solitary  speck  on  the  wide 
waste  of  waters  with  which  it  was  surrounded. 

"  My  babe,  little  Rose,  attracted  my  attention 
for  a  moment.  Quickly  my  longing  eyes  turned 
back  to  rest  again  upon  their  fond  object,  but  in 
vain  :  it  was  nowhere  to  be  seen.  Like  a  pall 
of  despair,  the  mist  of  spray  had  woven  a  thick 
and  purple  curtain,  that  fell  across  the  surface  of 
the  deep,  between  me  and  the  solitary  figure 
upon  that  grand  yet  cruel  ocean,  which  I 
eagerly  strained  my  eyes  to  see  once  more. 

"  It  was  as  though  I  was  lost  in  darkness,  gazing 
on  and  on  into  the  shadows^  striving  to  catch  one 
guiding  star  of  light — a  light  that  will  bless  my 
pathway,  leading  me  to  safety — a  light  that  I  see 
not,  that  will  not  break  across  my  dreary  way. 
And  like  a  child,  I  cry  out,  frightened,  and  know- 
ing not  what  I  fear. 

"The  little  phosphorescent  waves  glowed 
against  that  dark,  hazy  back-ground  of  spray 
with  a  brilliancy,  lovelier  than  any  jewel  that 
ever  gleamed  on  a  monarch's  brow. 

"Never  can  I  forget  the  sensation  of  loneli- 
ness which  in  that  moment  crept  over,  and 
oppressed  me.  Great  drops  of  cold  perspiration 
stood  upon  my  broAv.     My  blood  seemed  to  be 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


curdling  in  its  veins.  But  once  since  have  I 
experienced  an  ordeal  like  this :  that  was  the 
morning  when  Jesse  disappeared  round  the  curve 
of  the  road  up  yonder,  on  his  way  to  the  army ; 
then  I  felt  the  same  sensation  of  hopeless 
lonehness. 

"  For  hours  I  gazed  out  on  that  watery  solitude. 
Oh,  those  terrible  hours !  In  them  I  lived  ages 
of  mortal,  agonizing  anguish. 

"  Gradually  the  sky  away  out  at  sea  became 
overcast  and  lowering.  Within  twenty  minutes 
after  I  first  noticed  this,  a  white  squall  was 
sweeping  oA^er  the  face  of  the  placid  deep,  and 
lashing  its  tranquil  waters  into  wild  and  boister- 
ous waves.  These  came  with  deafening  roars, 
l)reaking  upon  the  beach;  each  cruel  sound  strik- 
ing my  wretched  heart  as  the  pitiless  vibrations 
of  the  death  bell,  tolling  out  the  sad  dirges  of 
some  departed  spirit. 

"  When  the  storm  had  spent  its  fury,  and  the 
sun  appeared  again  on  high,  bright  and  joyous  as 
if  there  were  no  woes  in  the  world,  and  no 
hearts  to  break,  the  boat  was  found  on  the 
beach,  not  more  than  tAvo  hundred  yards  from 
the  point  from  which  it  had  sailed  in  the  morn- 
ing. And  one  hour  later — oh,  cruel  fate !  pitiless 
destiny ! — the  body  of  my  poor  husband  was 
found  a  mile  away,  white  and  cold,  in  the  icy 
embrace  of  death. 

"  I  was  a  lonely  widow,  without,  as  far  as  I 
knew,  one  near  relative  of  either  my  husband's 
or  my  own  in  the  world. 

"  I  was  delirious  with  grief.  I  cannot  lecall 
anything  distinctly,  until  the  next  day  I  awoke 
to  consciousness,  in  bed,  in  my  own  room.  Mrs. 
Mountjoy  was  by  my  side  nearly  all  the  time 
until  a  late  hour  that  night;  and  came  home  with 
me  from  the  funeral  the  next  day,  remaining 
then  also  until  late. 

"On  Tuesday,  the  day  after  the  funeral,  I 
received  numerous  calls  and  tokens  of  condo- 
lence. On  Wednesday  morning  it  was  formally 
announced  that  Atkinson,  Flowers  &  Co.  had 
suspended ;  that  the  late  Mr.  Flowers,  as  it  had 
transpired,  had  been  engaged  in  extensive  specu- 
lations without  the  knowledge  of  the  other 
members  of  his  firm,  which  was  found  to  be 
hopelessly  involved.     And  with  this  announce- 


ment was  coupled  insinuations  too  contemptil)le 
to  utter. 

"  The  next  condolence  I  received  was  a  visit 
from  an  officer,  accompanied  by  Mr.  Stringfellow, 
to  seize  the  house  and  property. 

"I  was  coldly  informed  by  Mr.  Stringfellow 
that  I  would  be  a  beggar  in  the  streets,  and  that 
I  must  vacate  the  premises  within  the  space  of 
thirty  days.  A  man  was  left  in  charge  of  the 
property.  They  then  deprived  me  of  man}^  rights, 
and  a  legal  allowance  that  I  did  not  know  I  was 
entitled  to  receive;  but  I  was  too  wretched  and 
helpless  to  seek  counsel. 

"At  once  my  former  flattering  friends  aban- 
doned me;  not  one  of  them  came  to  my  aid: 
did  not  even  deign  to  recognize  me  on  the  street 
when  I  went  out  a  few  days  after;  the  servants 
were  insolent;  and  some  poor  persons  to  whom  I 
had  been  kind  and  lilDeral,  treated  me  with  marked 
disrespect. 

"  One  day  Mrs.  Mountjoy's  carriage  passed  me 
on  the  street.  Messrs.  Atkinson  and  String-fel- 
low occupied  seats  with  her  in  it,  and  were  as 
jovial,  and  apparently  as  happy,  as  possible. — They 
compromised  at  twenty-five  cents  on  the  dollar. 

"My  greatest  terror  was  where  to  go  and 
what  to  do,  and  about  my  sweet,  innocent  little 
babes,  all  unconscious  of  that  hopeless  despair 
and  grief  Avrenching  the  heart-strings  of  their 
poor,  heilpless,  friendless  mother.  My  tender  da-z-- 
lings !  what  would  become  of  them  ?  These  were 
the  questions  always  and  ever  ringing  in  my 
ears,  and  driving  me  mad,  because  they  were 
truly  unanswerable. 

"I  realized  that  I  must  descend  to  a  low 
and  humble  sphere  of  life.  But  how?  What 
could  I  do  ?  I  was  as  helpless  as  a  little  child, 
and  more  ignorant  of  the  world  below  the  high 
sphere  where  I  had  always  breathed  the  air  of 
boundless  independence. 

"  I  went  out  into  the  quarters  of  the  citv  occu- 
pied by  the  middle  classes,  but  gained  little  infor- 
mation and  met  no  encouragement. 

"  The  next  day  I  wont  into  the  laboring-man's 
and  the  tenement  quarters.  Oh,  God !  what  sick- 
ening, soul-moving  scene^s  there  met  my  eyes — 
what  sounds  grated  with  harsh  and  discordant 
cries  upon  my  ears  I     Before  I  would  have  gone 


THE  MOUNTAIN  CABIN. 


69 


into  that  region  of  misery,  my  babes  might  have 
famished  with  hunger  on.  my  breast;  and  then 
I  should  have  waited  with  unmoved  composure 
for  the  summons  of  the  grim  messenger. 

"As  I  was  hastening  to  leave  this  domain  of 
wretchedness,  disgusted,  faint  and  despairing,  I 
came  suddenly  to  a  neat  dress-making  establish- 
ment on  the  ground-floor.  Impulsively  I  rushed 
in  and  asked  for  the  lady  in  charge.  A  kind,  polite, 
pale  and  delicate  woman  stepped  forward,  and 
greeted  me.  I  drew  her  aside,  and  told  her  briefly 
my  situation,  and  implored  her  to  grant  me  some 
advice.  She  informed  me  that  her  duties  were 
such  that  it  would  be  impossible  for  her  to  do  so 
then,  but  that  she  would  take  my  address,  and 
call  on  me  with  pleasure  that  evening. 

"  As  I  went  slowly  and  sadly  back  to  what  had 
only  a  few  days  before  been  my  peaceful  and 
happy  home,  I  would  have  rejoiced  to  know  that 
my  babes  were  dead.  But  when  I  returned  to 
them,  their  rosy  cheeks,  their  bright  eyes,  and 
their  innocent  childish  laugh  fanned  to  a  glowing 
flame  a  mother's  love.  I  then  and  there  vowed, 
with  one  hand  on  the  head  of  each  little  inno- 
cent, that  night,  in  concert  with  the  woman  who 
had  promised  to  aid  me,  to  devise  some  plan  to 
save  them,  and  follow  it  through  weal  -or  woe, 
or  until  it  had  left  me  in  the  grave. 

"  The  little  woman  was  prompt.  She  said  in 
substance : 

"'City  life  and  intrigues  are  virtually  unknown 
to  you.  You  have  learned  more  from  the  bitter- 
ness of  one  Httle  week  than  in  all  the  years  of 
your  life.  May  Grod  spare  you  from  knowing 
more  from  anything  nearer  the  actual  experi- 
ence, than  what  I  shall  relate  to  you  to-night. 

"  'In  poverty,  abject  dependence  on  your  own 
exertions,  your  beauty  wiU  put  every  hour  of 
your  weary,  anxious  young  life  into  an  unmiti- 
gated torment,  from  which  there  is  neither  es- 
cape nor  redemption. 

"  '  I  was  left  a  widow  when  about  your  age, 
and  suddenly  reduced  from  comfort  and  plenty 
to  poverty  and  want.  I  was  what  the  Avorld 
terms  passably  fair,  but  did  not  approach  within 
many  degrees  of  your  beauty. 

" '  I  sought  employment  of  prominent  firms  who 
employed  lady  help.      In  three  instances  in  one 


day  I  was  shown  into  the  private  office,  and 
informed  that  I  could  have  work,  but  times  were 
dull  and  wages  low ;  and  then  in  each  case,  those 
dignified  gentlemen  (?)  told  me  that  if  I  chose 
to  do  so,  I  could  have  plenty  of  money  and  the 
luxuries  of  a  lady's  home.  Two  or  three  others 
were  too  busy ;  but  if  I  would  call  that  night  at 
their  residences  they  had  no  doubt  but  that  satis- 
factory terms  could  be  arranged. 

" '  I  had  a  terrible  experience,  and  have  gone  to 
bed  many  a  time  hungry  and  cold.  Thank  God 
I  had  no  children,  or  I  do  not  know  what  would 
have  become  of  me:  there  is  nothing  in  this 
world  so  strong  as  a  mother's  love.  I  preserved 
my  soul,  and,  by  constant  hard  work,  am  now  able 
to  keep  comfortable. 

"  'The  stories  of  some  of  those  poor  women  in 
my  shop,  the  continual  ordeals  through  which 
they  are  now  passing,  would  make  your  heart 
ache. 

"Beauty  is  the  greatest  misfortune  a  poor 
womiin,  forced  into  the  midst  of  the  city's  tur- 
moil, can  inherit. 

"'Now  for  my  advice.  Fly,  by  all  means  fly, 
from  this  modern  Babylon.  Do  not  stop  to  look 
back.  The  farther  into  the  country,  and  the 
deeper  and  more  remote  the  seclusion,  the  better 
for  you.  Sell  whatever  yota  cannot  conveniently 
carry.  Act,  act.  Do  not  waste  one  needless 
day.  If  you  know  any  one  in  such  a  locality  as 
I  have  mentioned,  so  much  the  better.  But  if 
you  would  save  yourself  and  babes,  fly  from  the 
impending  doom  of  inevitable  destruction.' 

"Fly!  fly!  was  ringing  in  my  ears  all  through 
that  night.  Before  the  dawn  of  day  I  had  com- 
pleted a  letter  to  'The  Angel  of  the  Mountain.' 

"Eight  days — eight  ages  of  suspense — would 
elapse  before  I  could  hope  to  see  an  answer.  But 
there  was  much  to  be  done.  It  was  a  terrible 
experience,  selling  my  little  surplus  trinkets  at 
one-tenth  their  value. 

"I  had  some  diamonds  and  pearls  that  had  been 
my  mother's.  These  I  prized  more  than  all  my 
former  wealth.  I  thought  I  could  not  part  with 
them.  But  I  found  it  impossible  to  reahze  suffi- 
cient money  to  satisfy  half  the  probable  demand 
and  keep  them.  I  gazed  first  at  them,  then  at 
my  little  babes.      To  my  eyes,  they  were  jewels 


70 


IMYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


far  brighter  and  more  precious  than  all  the  soulless 
gems  in  the  world.  I  turned  from  them  again  to 
those  dear  mementoes  of  my  angelic  mother,  and 
bathed  them  in  tears  of  an  affectionate  but 
eternal  farewell. 

"  Fifteen  days  after  the  date  of  my  letter,  I  was 
installed  in  this  cabin,  as  you  now  see  me ;  and 
Milton  Land  was  on  his  way  to  Illinois  with 
'  The  Angel  of  the  Mountain.' 

"  Ever  since  then  I  have  maintained  an  irregular 
correspondence  with  her.  Up  to  the  commence- 
ment of  the  war  they  were  prospering.  The  last 
letter  she  wrote  informed  me  that  Milton  had 
joined  the  Northern  army. 

"  Since  my  arrival  here,  you  know  the  story. 

"  All  the  years  which  I  have  passed  here,  full 
of  trials,  privations  and  hardships  as  most  of 
them  have  been,  have  not  seemed  longer,  nor  one 
thousandth  part  as  terrible,  as  the  same  number 
of  trying,  woeful  days  which  I  spent  in  New 
York,  writhing  in  the  living  death-throes  of  cruel 
wretchedness. 

"  Here  I  have  found  friends,  true,  devoted,  un- 
selfish friends,  with  rough  exteriors  and  unpol- 
ished speech,  but  oh !  what  hearts — so  noble,  so 
tender,  so  pure!" 

Miss  H :  "Oh,  Mrs.  Flowers!  my  unfortu- 
nate sister,  thrice  tried  in  the  ordeal  of  the  fiery 
crucible  and  come  forth  the  emblem  of  truth  and 
purity,  permit  me,  my  poor  friend,  in  the  name 
of  all  that  is  pure  and  womanly,  to  embrace  you; 
and  to  baptize  you  Avith  my  tears,  which  sym- 
pathy with  your  pathetic  sorrows  cannot  but 
bring  to  my  eyes ;  and  to  christen  you,  henceforth, 
'  The  Angel  of  the  Mountain  ! ' 

"And  you,  too,  little  Rosa,  precious  flower  of 
your  mountain-dale,  pure  as  yonder  drifted  snow 
so  deeply  bleached  in  the  northern  wind.  Dear 
little  girl,  let  me  press  you  to  my  heart  and  call 
you  my  own,  my  little  sister.  From  this  day  I 
am  your  sister  and  your  mother's  sister-friend, 
and  as  such  shall  you  find  my  devotion  and  my 
love ;  and  you  Avill  be  often,  often  my  compan- 
ions in  my  own  circle  and  I  in  yours. 

"  ;My  dear  niother  has  been  long  sleeping  in 
the  silent  church-yard  ;  a  sister's  love  and  a  sis- 
ter's kiss  I  have  never  known. 

"  I  have  looked  forward  to  the  conclusion  of 


my  years  at  college  with  longing  fondness,  as  a 
happy  period  of  re-union  with  my  only  l^rother, 
to  whom  I  was  almost  a  stranger. 

"Just  as  this  dream  was  about  to  be  finally 
i-ealized,  this  cruel  war  severed  us  more  widelj^ 
and  hopelessly  than  before,  as  it  parted  you  and 
your  heroic  little  Jesse,  and  so  many  other  loving 
hearts  all  over  this  unhappy  land. 

"But  for  the  unselfish  devotion  of  a  noble 
child  of  the  mountains,  I  would  have  no  brother 
to-day.  And  quite  a  just  resentment  of  his  un- 
thoughtful,  haughty  unkindness  shown  to  this 
mountain-boy,  on  various  occasions,  would  have 
caused  almost  every  one  to  remain  aloof.  But 
not  so  with  this  noble  comrade.  When  my  poor 
brother  had  been  abandoned  by  his  own  class, 
intimate  associates,  to  his  fate,  this  man,  from 
whom  he  could  hope  for  nothing,  came  forward 
Avith  the  tenderness  of  a  brother,  to  his  rescue. 
That  act  leveled  for  ever  all  barriers  between  our 
family  and  the  mountain  people.  Since  its 
knowledge  reached  me,  I  have  longed  to  knoAv 
more  of  them,  and  to  manifest  in  some  substantial 
manner  my  gratitude.  The  Avork  in  Avhich  I  am 
engaged  afforded  the  opportunity  I  so  much  de- 
sired. Eagerly  I  embraced  it.  Already,  even 
before  the  harvest,  I  am  reaping  a  rich  rcAvard ; 
the  blessings  of  the  dying  defenders,  Avhose  days 
of  battle  are  over,  and  the  prayers  of  the  loved 
ones  they  leave  mourning,  yet  not  bereft  of  hu- 
man consolation,  folloAv  me,  and  aid  me  in  my 
mission.  Now,  in  this  moment  of  halloAved  as- 
sociations and  sacred  remembrances,  I  solemnly 
voAv  to  devote  my  life,  be  its  years  many  or  fcAv, 
be  its  days  passed  in  the  sunshine  of  peace  or  in 
the  shadoAvs  of  sorroAV,  to  those  noble  hearts  Avho 
have  giA-en  their  all  for  the  sake  of  the  cause  I 
honor  and  the  land  I  love." 

Again  must  the  curtain  go  doAvn  to  obscure 
this  scene  of  devotion,  faith,  purity  and  love. 
After  the  clash  of  arms  has  ceased  to  echo,  and 
the  smoke  of  battle  has  been  dispelled,  and  the 
Avithered  violet  once  more  opens  its  blue  eyes  to 
tlie  spring-time  sun,  we  -will  see  again  "  The 
Angel  of  the  Mountain." 


UNCLE  JAKE   AND  THE  FAIRIES. 


71 


CHAPTER  XX. 


UNCLE      JAKE     AND     THE      FA 


ES. 


'"  For  I  am  getting  old  and  feeble,  I'll  never  work  no 
no  re — 
I'll  ne'er  hoe  the  corn  fields  o'er  again ; 
Yet  bright  angels  they'll  watch  o'er  me  as   I  lay  me 
down  to  sleep. 
In  my  little  old  log-cabin,  in  the  lane." 

—LOG  CABIN. 

Uncle  Jake,  whose  ebon  face  we  have  met 
before,  was  a  veritable  old  Virginia  log-cabin 
darkey.  He  had  been  a  character  in  his  little 
day.  He  could  draw  more  and  better  music  out 
of  his  old  banjo  than  any  other  person  on  the 
Virginia  banks  of  the  Potomac.  And  sing — 
"  Land  alive,"  as  the  old  colored  aunties  used  to 
say,  the  most  stoical  went  into  raptures  if  they 
once  heard  Uncle  Jake's  sonorous  voice  when  it 
was  just  a  trifle  oiled  with  old  peach-and-honey, 
and  he  had  fully  unbent  himself  and  come  down 
to  his  work ;  his  instrument  vibrating  with  one 
incessant  roll  of  varied,  gently  rolling  and  burst- 
ing swells  of  harmonious  melody,  with  his  vo- 
cal accompaniments  flowing  in  stirring  strains,  a 
deep,  fuh  current  of  his  most  wondrous  incan- 
tations. 

"The  Little  Old  Log-Cabin"  was  his  special 
favorite ;  and  he  was  at  the  acme  of  his  glory 
v/hen  he  held  an  admiring  crowd  applauding  with 
zeal,  or  spell-bound  with  his  magical  rendering 
of  this  most  pathetic  song  of  the  olden  time. 

With  the  young  lady  members  of  the  secret 
information  society  and  underground  communi- 
cation service,  described  in  the  chajjter  "Bej^ond 
the  Outposts,"  Uncle  Jake,  besides  being  an 
unrivaled  favorite  in  consequence  of  the  musical 
treats  which  he  had  always  furnished  them 
since  their  earliest  remembrance,  and  of  his  many 
other  mirth-provoking  accomplishments  was, 
because  of  his  unswerving  fidelity  to  the  friends 
of  his  tender  years,  his  mature  manhood,  and  his 
declining  age,  in  their  dark  hour  of  trial  and  of 
danger,  in  very  many  other  respects  utterly 
indispensable. 

On  account  of  the  many  strange  and  mysterious 
signals  adopted  between  neighboring  houses — 
often  extending  in  one  unljroken  circle  to  several 


settlements  or  neighborhoods  and  on  up  into 
even  Alexandria  itself ;  because  of  the  mystic  signs 
among  themselves  when  they  were  assembled; 
and  furthermore,  in  consequence  of  the  peculiar 
masquerade  balls  given  as  a  concession,  to  all 
ostensible  appearance,  to  some  Federal  officers 
who  were  invited,  and  always  attended, — Uncle 
Jake  styled  these  young  ladies  "the  Fairies." 

These  balls,  in  reality,  were  simply  ruses  skill- 
fully planned  by  the  young  ladies  to  hold  all  im- 
portant business  meetings,  and  see  some  of 
their  relatives  and  friends  from  the  Confederate 
army.  These  appeared  at  the  balls  in  ladies  cos- 
tumes, without  arousing  the  suspicions  of  the 
Northern  troops  in  the  vicinity. 

To  similar  organizations  in  some  form,  per- 
haps differing  very  widely  from  this  particular 
one,  yet  objectively  the  same,  in  every  part  of 
the  border  districts  of  the  Southern  States,  may 
justly  be  attributed  the  reasons  why  it  was  so 
nearly  impossible  for  the  National  troops  to 
attempt  any  move  without  their  opponents  being 
immediately  apprised  of  the  fact  and  of  its 
nature.  On  the  other  hand,  it  clearly  explains 
the  reason  why  the  Confederate  commanders 
could  keep  their  movements  concealed  from 
their  opponents  behind  a  cloud  of  impenetrable 
mystery. 

"Whenever  there  was  a  programme  for  a  ball 
arranged  on  the  afternoon  preceding  the  desig- 
nated -evening,  hours  before  the  time  ap- 
pointed for  the  Federal  officers  to  appear  the 
young  ladies,  accompanied  by  "any  contraband 
male  friends  who  were  to  participate  in  the 
festivities,  decked  in  their  strange  feminine  dis- 
guises, and  heavily  veiled,  assembled  with  Uncle 
Jake  at  the  designated  place  of  rendezvous. 

The  only  Federal  officers  invited  on  these 
occasions  Avere  West-Pointers  of  undoubted 
repute  as  gentlemanly  disciplinarians  and  war- 
riors, prosecuting  their  inhuman  profession  on 
strictly  civilized  principles.  They  were  in  no 
danger  whatever  of  becoming  victims  to  snares 
similar  to  those  in  which  we  have  already  seen 
some  of  their  volunteer  brother  officers  en- 
trapped. So  delicately  deferential  were  these 
officers  toward  the  peculiar  and  sensitive  posi- 
tion of  those  with  whom  they  were  to  enjoy  the 


72 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


diverting  pleasures  of  an  evening,  that,  rather  than 
take  the  chances  of  their  obnoxious  uniforms 
marring  in  any  degree  the  pleasures  of  the 
hour,  they  alvs^ays  apj^eared  in  full  evening  cos- 
tumes. They  were,  therefore,  when  masked, 
difficult  to  distinguish  from  the  non-combatants 
of  the  community,  a  few  of  whom  were  some- 
times present,  acting  an  indifferent  part  in  the 
festival  phase  of  the  performance. 

Owing  to  a  large  poi-tion  of  their  duties  being 
the  patrolling  of  the  country,  and  the  capturing  of 
all  prowlers  or  imjiroper  absentees  from  their  com- 
mand, whether  they  were  officers  or  enlisted  men 
of  the  Northern  army,  two  of  our  friends  had 
become  quite  extensive  favorites,  as  enemies, 
among  the  citizens.  Those  officers  did  their 
work  so  vigorously  and  effectively  that  the 
citizens  were  relieved  from  innumerable  annoy- 
ances and  losses.  To  stragglers,  they  soon  be- 
came a  greater  terror  than  the  rebel  scouts,  be- 
cause even  the  shelter  of  the  guns  on  Arlington 
Heights  was  not  a  protection  to  which  they 
could  fly  with  defiant  impunity  from  pressing 
danger  of  cajoture,  and  find  secure  immunity 
from  arrest,  as  they  often  could  easily  do  if  men- 
aced by  hostile  pursuers.  Those  indefatigable 
officers  and  their  followers  did  not  fear  the  frown- 
ing battlements  of  Arlington.  They  were  no 
less  famihar  personages  than  Maj.  Lawrence 
Pleasington,  and  Lieut.  Orlando  Oglethrop. 
They  were,  as  a  matter  of  course,  always  invited, 
and,  unless  their  duties  rendered  it  absolutely 
impossible,  were  present  as-  participants  in  these 
unique  and  mystical  festivities. 

At  this  time,  about  a  fortnight  since,  we  saw 
Maj.  Pleasington  and  his  antagonist.  Cloud, 
meet  and  part,  and  heard  Oglethrop,  amid  the 
enchantments  of  Mountjoy  House,  depicting  the 
Avoes  of  poor  Col.  Worthington  in  the  wintry 
midnight  and  the  snow  of  the  wilderness-soli- 
tude, there  is  a  masquerade-ball  on  the  eve  of 
transpiring  at  an  old  Virginia  mansion,  not  more 
than  a  dozen  rods  from  where  Pleasington  and 
Cloud  last  parted.  It  is  the  same  mansion  Avhere 
Cloud  captured  the  madly-infatuated  officer  who 
was  so  blindly  in  love  with  the  young  lady  of  the 
house. 

This  young  lady  was  betrothed  to  the  young 


master  of  Uncle  Jake's  home :  hence  the  old  man 
regarded  her  with  an  affection  approaching  his 
reverence  for  her  affianced  husband,  a  dashing, 
daring  cavalry  officer  in  the  Confederate  service, 
who  had  had  several  severe  encounters  with 
Pleasington  and  Oglethrop  and  their  men,  on  dis- 
puted belts  of  ground  up  at  the  dead-Hne  points, 
between  the  two  extreme  out-posts;  in  these 
several  men  had  gone  down  on  both  sides. 

After  the  3"0ung  ladies,  their  companions,  and 
Uncle  Jake  had  assembled,  the  masks,  together 
with  all  resti-aints,  were  thrown  off.  They  uni- 
ted usually  in  the  dining-hall,  or  some  other 
private  room.  Whatever  business  they  had  to 
transact  was  quickly  dispatched.  Then  the  inter- 
vening hours  before  the  masqueraders  were 
expected  to  appear,  Avere  passed  in  pleasures  of 
their  own  devising. 

Uncle  Jake,  with  his  banjo,  was  called  into  re- 
quisition. First  he  played  and  sang  some  wild 
and  uproarious  plantation  songs.  These  were  fol- 
lowed by  strains  more  plaintive  and  wild;  this 
again  Avith  music  of  melting  pathos  and  sorrowful 
melancholy.  His  acting  was  simply  grand ;  un- 
surpassed not  even  by  Booth's  Richelieu  nor 
Jefferson's  Rip  Van  Winkle.  From  uncontrol- 
lable, hysterical  laughter  he  transformed  his  audi- 
ence to  tears  of  tenderest  compassion.  Then  he 
seemed  happy;  and  would  regale  them  with 
stories  and  mimic  representations,  sometimes  of 
imaginary,  but  oftener  of  real,  scenes  which  he 
had  witnessed.  The  more  he  was  phed  with 
interrogatives,  and  the  more  they  savored  of  sar- 
casm and  skepticism,  the  better  Avas  the  old  man 
pleased. 

On  this  particular  evening  and  at  this  specified 
place,  where  we  Avill  doubtless  be  spectators  for 
a  time,  there  are  present  two  Confederate  officers, 
and  but  eight  of  the  ten  ladies,  listed  in  the  pro- 
gramme, the  missing  ones  having  resigned  their 
places  in  favor  of  the  two  officers  to  Avhom  Ave 
have  just  referred.  Uncle  Jake  has  just  closed 
his  musical  and  vocal  prelude,  set  his  banjo doAvn, 
and  heaved  a  deep-draAvn  sigh,  his  large  Avhite 
eyes  rolling  in  their  sockets  from  the  features  of 
one  to  another  of  his  patrons,  with  profound  and 
searching  scrutiny. 

Evidently,  the  result  is  satisfactory  in  the  high- 


UNCLE  JAKE  AND  THE  FAIRIES. 


73 


est  degree.  Complacently  the  old  man  folds  his 
arms  and  awaits  an  indication  as  to  what  scene 
he  is  desired  next  to  present.  For  a  few  mo- 
ments the  silence  of  the  tomb  pervades  the  apart- 
ment. The  last  song  rendered  was  a  memorial 
ballad  to'Napoleon  Bonaparte,  a  few  closing  lines 
of  which  ran  thus : 

"  No  more  she'll  behold  him,  at  Cloud  In  great  splen- 
dor; 

No  more  he'll  appear,  like  the  noble  Alexander. 

Louisa  may  mourn  for  her  husband  departed, 

Likei  dove  that'sforlorn,  or  one  that's  broken-hearted. 

She  may  sit  down  and  think  of  the  battles  he  has  been 
In, 

As  she  sighs  for  his  bones  on  the  rock  of  Saint  Helen." 

The  mournful  air  and  sadly  tremulous  cadences 
of  Uncle  Jake's  voice,  together  with  the  affecting 
tenderness  and  touching  sentiments  breathed 
throughout  this  lengthy  ballad,  have  made  a 
general  and  deep  impression. 

But  the  silence  is,  however,  at  length  broken. 

First  Officer:  "Well,  Jake,  old  imp  of  dark- 
ness, what  is  the  news  down  here  in  this  mystic 
region,  where  Cupid,  the  Yank  patrols,  and  the 
rebel  scouts  hold  alternately  such  high  carnivals, 
and  get  mingled  together  sometimes  in  such  un- 
pleasant and  heterogeneous  confusion  ?  Now, 
out  with  the  truth,  old  mto.  We  can  learn  noth- 
ing up  in  the  command.  The  scouts,  when  we 
get  to  see  one,  once  in  a  httle  age,  are  mum  as 
the  Egyptian  mummies.  And  these  pretty  little 
coquettes,  the  sweet  innocents,  they  are  as  igno- 
rant as  Comanche  papooses  on  the  plains. 
Come,  now,  you  know  all  about  it." 

Uncle  Jake  :  "  Fore  de  Lawd,  mas'  Clem,dis  chile 
bin  done  brok  he  nee  purty  ni  'bout  forty  leb- 
bun  times  trian  to  cotch  dat  crittur,  de  nuse ;  but 
golly,  he  de  wilest  colt  ebber  I  tri  to  get  de  bridel 
on  too,  cepten  my  name  done  an  eny  mo  Ante 
Jake.  Bress  ore  sole  hunny  dis  ole  niggur  mo  in 
de  dark  dan  all  ob  ye  togedur.  Ders  mo  tawken 
on  de  fingurs  and  wid  hankchurs  an  all  sots  fol 
da  rol  da,  an  no  body  nebber  seed  an  he  all  Chuc- 
tow  to  ole  Jake  shure  as  de  Lawd  libs." 

Second  Officer  :  "  How  about  those  two  Yanks, 
Pleasington  and  Oglethrop,  who  patrol  around 
here,  and  that  scout  Cloud?  Do  you  know 
them,  Jake?" 

Uncle  Jake.  :   "  Lausy  mussy ;  dat  I  do.     Dey 


iz  de  two  bess  Yanks  'roun'  dese  diggins.  Dey 
keeps  de  thebbun  tras'  clend  outin  and  iz  peerlite 
to  ebbery  body,  an  doan  kuni  cortin  de  gals 
whoze  sheetharts  deyz  trian  ter  kill.  An  uze 
axin  me  bout  dat  ung  Cloud.  Heze  zactly  like  de 
lershmun's  fle.  When  uze  doan  got  yor  fingur 
onto  he,  den  he  been  skip  outin  dat,  kerflumix." 

First  Officer.  :  "  But  Cloud  is  doing  nothing 
but  flirt  with  the  girls,  Jake,  is  he?  He  has  quit 
catching  Yankees  lately." 

Uncle  Jake  :  Darze  whar  uze  fuled.  He  neb- 
bur  gwine  inside  a  house  ceptin  to  cotch  a  Yank. 
Heze  too  sharp  for  dal^ — too  frade  gotten  traped. 
An  las  nite  he  cotch  a  ofFacur  dats  bin  boddurin 
ung  missus  dis  long  time.  Peers  dat  chap  allurs 
nowed  when  de  patrols  gwine  sum  udder  way, 
kase  dey  nebbur  cotch  him.  Now  las  nite  he  war 
dar.  Missus,  plain  de  plana.  Ant  Hana  war  roun 
'  bout  de  parlur.  Jake  war  in  de  kichun,  an  dis 
ni  jiste  what  she  cum  back  dar  tellin  me,  an  de  ole 
gal  war  puty  ni  whit  as  a  shete.  '  Jake'  she  sed, 
'all at  onct Missus,  stop  plain  an  say  Hist — dereb- 
buls — hide  'hind  de  plana,  Majur.  Den  bout  a 
minit  mo  ung  Cloud  war  in  de  parlur,  tawken 
crose  to  missus;  kusin  her  harbburin  Yanks,  an 
she  nien  it  jist  like  a  little  lade,  when  Cloud  finde 
de  Majur,  an  order  him  out,  an  tell  Missus  he  gwine 
to  member  dat  and  settle  wid  her  anudder  time, 
an  porh  Missus  'gun  crian,  an  Cloud  he  hurry  off 
wid  de  Majur,  an  I  jist  lafe  at  Hana." 

Second  Officer:  "The  Yanks  want  to  catch 
Cloud.  Some  fine  day  he  will  find  that  you  have 
sold  him.  He  is  a  big  fool  to  trust  you  as  he 
does.     I  would  not." 

Uncle  Jake:  "Heze  bettur  juge  humon  natur 
dan  u,  dat  aur  de  splanin  queshum  ob  all  dis." 

Miss  Cornelia  :  [Coming  excitedly  to  the  door] 
"Hist!  Pleasington  and  Oglethrop  are  in  the  front 
parlor  and  their  patrols  out  in  the  lane.  Be  cfuiet. 
There  is  no  danger.  They  are  here  to  meet  Cloud 
under  a  truce,  and  expect  him  directly." 

First  Officer:  "Ah!  Jim,  let  us  eavesdrop 
them  from  the  back  parlor.  Now  learn  Ave  can 
some  of  these  mysteries^" 

Cloud:  [Entering  front  parlor]  " Maj.  Pleas- 
ington, I  am  here  in  response  to  your  note  re- 
questing an  interview." 

Maj.  P :  "  Yes,  Mr.  Cloud.    But  first  allow 


74 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


me  to  introduce  Lieut.  Ogletlirop,  Avlio  -n-as 
anxious  to  see  you." 

Cloud:  "  Ah  Lieutenant,  I  have  heard  of  j^ou. 
The  chances  are  rather  more  than  even  that 
we  may  meet  a  Httle  more  unpleasantly  one  of 
these  days.  I  suppose  you  want  to  be  able  to 
recognize  me,  in  that  event — is  it  not  so  ?  " 

LiKUT. 0 :  "If  you  are  going  to  handle  me 

proportionately  as  roughly  as  you  handled  my  three 
men  that  da}',  I  would  like  to  shun  rather  than 
meet  you." 

Cloud:  "Well  Major,  your  business?" 

Maj.  p.  :  "  Maj.  Eugene  Lovelace,  a  staff  offi- 
cer, started  from  Alexandria,  late  last  evening,  for 
a  ride  in  the  direction  of  Annendale,  as  he  fre- 
quently starts,  and  failed  to  return.  Somehow  a 
report  has  reached  head-quarters  to-day  that  he 
was  shot,  or  rather  that  one  of  your  scouts  told 
some  colored  people  that  he  had  shot  an  officer 
about  dusk  last  night  on  that  road,  and  that  his 
horse  ran  away  into  the  woods  with  him.     G-en. 

M has  requested  me  to  try  and  discover  the 

particulars,  and  also  learn,  as  near  as  possible, 
the  locality." 

Cloud  :  "  Present  my  compliments  to  G-en.  M — ;— , 
with  the  information  that  Maj.  Lovelace  is  now 
on  his  way  to  Richmond,  and  was  sound  and  well 
this  morning;  and  that  he  was  captured  miles 
from  the  road  which  you  have  just  named." 

Maj.  P :  "  Did  you  capture  him,  Mr.  Cloud, 

and  if  so,  the  particulars  if  you  please,  that  I  may 
render  them  in  my  report?" 

Cloud:  "These  are  delicate  points  Major, 
which  generosity  to  the  unfortunate  captive  force 
me  to  decline  to  furnish.  For  particulars,  you 
will  certainly  be  under  the  necessity  of  waiting 
until  the  Major  has  an  opportunity  of  supplying 
them  himself.  I  have  not  reported  the  circum- 
stances to  my  own  commanders;  decidedly,  then, 
I  cannot  entertain  the  idea  of  furnishing  them 
to  you." 

Maj.  P :  "  I  see  my  mistake  and  withdraw 

the  question.  Now  tell  me  about  little  Flowers. 
How  is  he  ?  " 

Cloud:  "Well,  and  in  high  spirits.  He  has 
just  heard  from  home.  His  famil}'  has  lately 
received  a  handsome  sum  of  money  from  a 
friend  of  yours,  whom  I  will  not  name.     Also 


his  mother  and  sister  and  mine  have  received 
magnificent  presents  of  cloaks,  dress-goods,  etc., 
with  the  sweetest  little  letters,  full  of  gratitude 
to  the  sons  and  brothers  who  saved  the  life  of 
the  writer's  nearest  and  dearest  friend,  at  the  bat- 
tle of  Stone  Bridge.  This  friend,  very  delicately, 
mark  you.  Major,  is  not  named.  But  we  boys 
happen  to  know  that  it  is  to  Maj.  Law- 
rence Pleasington,  and  to  no  other  person,  that 
reference  is  made.  And  to  those  letters  was  the 
superscription  of  the  sweetest  little  name — the 
most  precious  little  name.  Effie  Edelstein — that 
Edehtein,  Major,  don't  it  translate  jjrecjo its  stone  or 
jewel? 

"  There,  now,  Major,  don't  blush  so.  I  told  you 
this  merely  to  dispel  any  shades  of  doubt  which' 
might  creep  or  be  forced  into  your  mind  about 
her  fidelity  and  devotion.  Better  tell  her.  Major, 
that  this  proof  is  overwhelming;  and  that  if  she 
undertakes  to  reward  all  the  Confederates  who 
may,  or  would  save  your  life  under  similar  cir- 
cumstances, she  is  likely  to  be  very  poor  at  the 
close  of  the  war.     That  is  all." 

Lieut.  O :  "  There,  now,Pleasington,  is  proof 

that  all  the  social  strategy  of  New  York  can  never 
prevail  on  that  girl  to  discard  you  in  favor  of  any 
man  living,  while  you  are  above  the  sod. 

"Mr.  Cloud,  that  is  worth  a  small  mint  to  him. 
He  has  the  blues  fearfully,  sometimes,  because  of 
the  powerful  influence  working  against  him  while 
he  is  down  here  in  the  cold  winter,  near  at  anj' 
time  to  the  valley  and  shadow  of  death.  But  I 
heard  Uncle  Jake's  banjo  and  voice  as  we  come 
up  the  lane.  Would  you  not  like  to  her  him,  Mr. 
Could?" 

Cloud:  "  Yes,  one  song.  I  have  not  time  for 
any  more." 

Lieut.  0 :   "  I  will  go  to  the  door,  ring  the 

bell,  and  send  for  him." 

He  suits  the  action  to  the  words,  and  Miss 
Earl  responds. 

Miss  Cornelia  :  "  AYhat  do  you  wish,  Lieuten- 
ant? " 

Lieut.  0 :  "  Uncle  Jake,  with  his  banjo,  Miss 

Earl,  if  you  please." 

She  hastens  away  and  Jake  enters  the  parlor. 

Uncle  Jake  :  "  Ebnin  to  uze,  gentilmans.  Ize 
kum  ter  see  wut  uze  want  wid  dis  ole  niggur." 


UNCLE  JAKE  AND  THE  FAIEIES. 


75 


Pleasington  and  OoLETHROP :  "A  song:  'Log- 
Cabin,'  Jake." 

Cloud:  "And  this,  then,  is  the  old  reprobate 
who  is  all  the  time  giving  you  people  information 
to  get  us  scouts  captured.  It  is  a  good  thing  I 
am  under  a  truce,  and  Jake  under  the  protection 
of  his  friends,  or  he  would  very  soon  be  on  his 
way  to  Richmond." 

Maj.  P — '—:  "  Oh,  ouv  people  have  great  confi- 
dence in  Jake,  and  trust  him  any  where  he  chooses 
to  go  ;  but  as  to  his  information,  I  am  beginning  to 
set  but  httle  value  upon  it,  as  we  have  never  yet 
captured  a  man  on  it.  I  think  you  can  deceive 
Jake  easier  than  our  troops." 

Cloud:  "His  wiU  is  better  than  his  informa- 
tion. You  don't  want  to  get  out  of  hailing  dis- 
tance of  your  friends  here,  old  man.  Do  you 
understand?   But  the  song — '  Log  Cabin.'  " 

Uncle  Jake  :   "  Yes,  massa.     Ize  berry  furd." 

Jake  immeditately  launches  forth  in  his  song ; 
and  the  first  verse  is  rendered  Avith  thrilling  im- 
pressiveness  until  he  strikes  the  lines : 
"But  now  ebbery  ding  iz  changed,  de  darkies  am  all 

gone— 
He  nebbur  h'aredem  hoin  in  the  fields  again— 
An  Ibe  nufQnleft  me  now  but  dat  little  dog  ob  mine. 
In  my  little  ole  log  cabin  in  de  lane. 
Not  many  months  ago  aroun'  my  cabin  door, 
De  darkies  were  happe  den  I  no, 
Dey  sang  an  dance  all  nite  as  I  play  my  ole  banjo, 
But,  alas !  dey  kan  nebber  do  so  any  mo— 
Oh!  my  chimne's  tumbling  down,  de  stars  am  peepin 

al'  roun'. 
An  de  time's  soon  comiu'  when  I  must  go, 
But  brite  angels  dey  will  lede  me  to  dat  far-off  happe 

Ian', 
Whar  Ize  to  mete  old  Massa  an'  Missus  once  mo'." 

Then  the  old  man  rose  to  subUme  and  match- 
less grandeur.  His  frame  swayed  and  heaved 
with  powerful  emotion ;  his  eyes  rolled;  turned 
heavenward;  then  closed,  while  the  twitching 
pupils  were  steadily  raised  by  the  great  sluices  of 
big  tear-drops  which  poured  from  them  in  tor- 
rents. His  voice  rose  and  fell  in  tremulous 
waves,  from  the  wildest  notes  of  woeful  distress, 
in  the  first  dread  moments  of  its  birth  down  to 
the  low.  faint,  pitiful  moans  of  despair  after  the 
last  flickering-ray  of  hope  has  vanished.  And  his 
instrumental  performance — it  mocks  the  jDower  of 
words ;  a  description  of  it  is  impossible.  In  every 
respect  and  particular,  it  harmonized  in  strict  ac- 


cordance with  the  gestures,  the  emotions,  and  the 
tones  of  the  voice,  of  its  skillfully  artistic  master. 
He  would  disengage  one  hand;  point  away  in 
the  direction  of  the  fields ;  his  cabin  ;  the  grave- 
yard, or  heaven.  While  in  this  position,  the  in- 
strument would  turn  bottom  upwards,  as  if  by 
some  magical  influence  which  it  was  beyond  the 
cunning  of  spectators  ever  to  detect.  Thus  it 
would  remain  for  a  moment,  and  then  turn  back 
in  the  same  mysterious  way,  while  the  unbroken 
current  of  the  music  continued  to  flow  in  the  same 
rapturous  strains,  without  missing  the  proper 
measure  of  time  by  so  much  as  the  thousandth 
part  of  a  second,  or  faiUng  in  even  one  note  to 
breathe  in  pure,  articulate  perfection. 

The  three  auditors  had  risen,  and  were 
standing  with  folded  arms  and  pale  faces,  the  hot 
tears  streaming  down  their  cheeks, when  the  echoes 
died  away  in  the  grand  old  mansion,  where,  in 
daj's  that  are  dead,  often,  often  had  resounded 
the  voice  of  Washington.  Here  were  three 
soldiers  weeping  over  a  negro  song,  rendered  by 
a  simple  old  darkey  of  the  by-gone  time ;  men 
whose  eyes  would  flash  defiant  fire  in  the  face  of 
mortal  danger. 

You  might  smile  with  disdainful  incredulitj^, 
until  you  had  once  heard  the  performance  as  we 
have ;  then  you,  too,  with  hearts  thrilled  by  the 
mournful  melody,  would  find  your  lips  quivering 

]    and  your  eyes  dim. 

'  A  silent  pressure  of  the  hands  among  the 
soldiers,  and  Uncle  Jake  said  the  farewells;    the 

:  former  left  the  house,  mounted  their  horses,  sepa- 
ratee], and  rode  rapidly  away  without  uttering  a 
word. 


Some  Avell-known  historical  illustrations,  more 
romantic -still  than  the  scenes  portrayed  of  the 
regular  characters  in  this  plot,  might  frequently 
be  advanced,  with  the  real  names  of  the  parties, 
without  the  least  disrespect  to  propriety.  One 
case  in  point  is  too  prominent  and  too  good  to 
be  ignored.  It  constitutes  such  overwhelming 
testimony  in  support  of  features  of  this  work 
which  might  be  viewed  with  skepticism  that  we 
cannot  resist  the  temptation  to  produce  it 
undisguised. 

Oakland,  Maryland,  2,800  feet  above  the  sea- 


76 


IklYSTIC.  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


level,  is  on  the  Baltimore  and  Oliio  Railroad. 
Uefore"  this  railroad  was  built,  that  sequestered 
spot  was  buried  deep  in  a  primeval  forest  which 
stretched  its  prodigious  length  far  along  the 
border  line  between  Marjdand  and  Virginia. 
This  spot,  Oakland,  was  a  famous  and  charming 
mountain  resort  before  the  war.  It  then  consisted 
of  the  few  cabins,  cottages,  a  church  and  an 
express  office  about  a  well-ordered  house,  cahed 
the  Glades  Hotel. 

A  Virginia  family  by  the  name  of  Dailey  came 
to  Oakland  the  year  before  the  war,  to  spend  the 
summer.  The  head  of  the  family  was  a  genuine 
specimen  of  the  rural  Virginia  gentleman  of  that 
by-gone  time — courteous,  jovial,  hospitable  to  a 
fault;  the  mother,  a  queenly  lady  and  amiable 
housewife,  devoted  to  her  son  and  two  daugh- 
ters, was  envied  by  many  tourists. 

The  day  came  that  made  a  sensation  for  the 
mountain-crowning  Oakland:  the  hotel  was  to 
change  hands;  there  was  to  be  a  sale  by  auction. 
At  the  appointed  hour  Mr.  Dailey  sauntered  in 
merely  to  gratify  curiosity.  Wheri  he  was 
seated  with  his  family  at  the  dinner-table,  he 
gave  his  wife  a  graat  shock  by  saying,  "Ma, 
I've  bought  the  hotel  over  yonder!"  The  diffi- 
culty of  "keeping  a  hotel"  was  probably  not  as 
profoundly  impressed  on  the  understanding  of 
Mr.  Dailey  at  that  time  as  it  is  now  generally 
appreciated.  However,  he  bravely  undertook 
the  task,  and  succeeded  admirably  in  giving  satis- 
faction to  all  whom  he  entertained. 

His  family  negroes  were  brought  to  supply 
the  hotel  with  its  requisite  corps  of  servants. 
In  almost  all  bodies  of  plantation  or  family 
slaves  in  the  South,  and  more  especially  in 
Virginia,  there  was  one  noted  character.  This 
was  Uncle  Jake,  at  the  Fairchild  homestead. 
In  Mr.  Dailey's  numerous  family  of  colored 
people  this  important  personage  was  Aunt 
Cynthy,  a  tall  jellow  woman.  She  had  been 
the  foster  nurse  of  Mars  Jim,  a  young  man  then 
in  his  teens. 

Naturally,  therefore.  Aunt  Cynthy  was  in- 
stalled as  the  presiding  genius  of  the  kitchen — 
the  queen  of  the  culinary  department  of  the 
hotel ;  and  she  ruled  with  a  despotism  that  often 
caused    the  troop    of   colored    waiters   to    rush 


with  suspicious  precipitation  fi-om  her  domain 
back  into  the  dining-room  when  any  of  them 
had  delivered  her  an  unwelcome  order.  But 
this  was  on  her  bad  days  only,  some  two  or 
three  of  which  occasionally  came  together. 
Then  the  mistress  deemed  it  most  wise  to  absent 
herself  from  the  kitchen,  when  she  confessed 
herself  in  mortal  terror  of  her  own  indulged 
slave.  At  these  times  it  was  recognized  that  no 
one  but  Mars  Jim,  her  idol,  could  do  anytlnng 
with  Aunt  Cynthj'.  This  old  woman  would 
make  a  strong  character  in  a  story  of  real  life, 
with  its  plot  located  chiefly  at  Oakland. 

But  the  central  figure  of  this  family  picture, 
and  the  admirable  heroine  of  romantic  vicissi- 
tudes, was  the  oldest  daughter.  Miss  Mary 
Dailey,  To  a  lithe,  elastic,  beautifully  symmetrical 
figure,  slightly  under  the  medium  size,  a  bright 
face  full  of  animation,  deep  blue  eyes,  and  light 
brown  locks,  slightly  curling,  she  added  a  bril- 
liant charm  of  ready  wit.  She  was  always 
good-natured,  and  manifested  a  generous  impulse 
of  heart  that  made  her  an  unrivaled  favorite  at 
Oakland. 

When  the  war  came,  with  its  scenes  of  horror 
and  tales  of  woe,  it  was  by  the  aid  of  these 
exceptional  qualities  that  she  was  enabled  to 
play  well  a  very  difficult  role  in  those  times  of 
trouble,  danger  and  distress.  Her  family  and 
herself  were  ardently  heart  and  soul,  in  all  their 
sympathies  and  affiliations  with  the  South, 
while  the  location  of  Mr.  Dailey's  property  and 
its  surroundings  constantly  exposed  it  and  his 
near  and  dear  ones  to  the  "  two  unequal  fires " 
of  the  blue  boys  and  the  grey.  There  is  little 
room  to  doubt  but  that,  b}^  her  tact  and  personal 
popularity  Mary  Dailey,  young  as  she  was,  did 
much  to  save  her  family  and  neighbors  from 
the  loss  and  suffering  which  would  have  become 
their  lot  as  the  inevitable  consequences  of  their 
well-known,  notorious  and  undissembled  Southern 
proclivities. 

We  have  before  us  now  a  clipping  from  an 
ancient  newspaper,  published  before  the  war, 
aptly  illustrating  the  ready-wit  of  this  fairy 
enchantress.  This  article  went  the  rounds  of  the 
press  at  that  time.  Miss  Dailey  was  then  in  her 
teens,    and  a  school-girl.      President  Buchanan 


UNCLE   JAKE  AND   THE  FAIRIES. 


77 


was  on  liis  way  to  Wheeling,  and  stopped  for 
some  usual  delay  at  Oakland  Station,  where  many 
jjersons  were  presented  to  him,  each  of  whom  he 
asked  from  what  State  he  or  she  hailed.  At  last 
the  turn  of  little  Mary  Dailey  came  to  be  pre- 
sented to  the  Chief  Magistrate  of  the  first  Eepub- 
lic  in  the  world.  Then  he  said  to  her,  "  And  wliat 
State  are  you  from,  Miss?"  "  From  the  same 
State  as  your  Excellency, — the  state  of  single  bles- 
sedness," she  quickly  replied.  Thus  early  were 
visible  indications  of  a  boundless  fertility  of  the 
sentimental  demonstrated. 

Much  the  same  state  of  affairs  prevailed  in  the 
circle  of  which  Mary  Dailey  was  the  leading- 
spirit,  as  that  at  which  we  have  glanced,  where 
Uncle  Jake  was  the  sublime  genius.  The  object 
of  each  compact  was  identically  the  same — that 
of  serving  the  South ;  and  they  were  both  in- 
directly and,  in  some  respects,  directly  connected 
— Miss  Dailey's  league,  and  that  with  Avhich  Jake 
labored.  In  the  former,  Cynthy,  in  many  re- 
spects, performed  much  the  same  functions  as 
Jake  in  the  latter.  With  Miss  Dailey  were  asso- 
ciated other  ladies,  under  much  the  same  condi- 
tions as  those  which  governed  the  ''  Fairies  "  of 
Uncle  Jake.  Her  rendezvous  was  a  great  central 
point  with  which  many  other  secret-service 
leagues  of  the  Virginia  border  maintained  regular 
and  systematic  communication.  The  location 
was  admirably  suited  for  this  purpose,  owing  to 
its  secure  approaches,  utterly  unknown  to  stran- 
gers, and  which,  therefore,  could  not  be  guarded  to 
prevent  contraband  communications  from  passing. 

The  strategy  practiced  by  Miss  Dailey  was 
almost  too  grand  to  be  creditable.  She  made 
personal  sacrifices  which  are  admirable  as  any- 
thing to  be  found  on  the  pages  of  fairy  tale. 
We  much  regret  that  consistency  denies  her  a 
number  of  chapters  in  this  book  and  a  prominent 
place  in  its  plot.  Her  strongest  point  was  gained 
by  winning  the  admiration  of  her  foemen — an  art 
in  which  she  was  a  most  skillful  adept.  This  she 
accomplished  in  many  ways  and  by  divers  means. 
One  of  these,  an  early,  simple  but  potent  experi- 
ment, has  been  since  related  by  the  lady  herself. 

"  The  new  wing  of  the  hotel,  before  its  com- 
pletion, was  taken  by  the  Union  forces,  in  pos- 
session of  the  road   and  encamped  at  this  point 


for  temporary  barracks  and  a  hospital.  Some 
sick  and  wounded  Union  soldiers  were  brought 
in  one  day.  I  looked  across  from  my  window 
into  the  opposite  rooms,  where  the  poor  felloAvs 
had  been  laid  on  blankets — a  few  on  mattresses. 
My  heart  melted  at  the  sight  of  the  suffering 
enemy.  I  braved  even  the  terrible  Cynthy, — who 
was  none  too  favorably  inclined  toward  the 
Tanks, — so  great  was  my  compassion,  and  insisted 
upon  making  a  large  caldron  of  chicken-broth  for 
them.  When  this  was  done  I  carried  a  smoking 
bowlful  in  each  hand  to  the  window.  One  young 
fellow,  pale  and  famished,  took  the  savory  mess, 
and  put  it  eagerly  to  his  lips.  '  Hold  on  Bob ! 
maybe  that  stuff's  poisoned!'  sang  out  a  com- 
rade on  the  floor  beside  him.  The  sick  man 
hesitated  for  one  moment,  as  he  gazed  eagerly  at 
me,  while  my  blue  eyes,  frank  as  day,  on  this 
occasion  at  least,  doubtless  flashed  their  indignant 
protest;  he  said:  'Oh,  for  shame!  I'll  trust 
that  girl's  face  for  my  life.  Here's  thank'ee  to 
3-0U,  miss! '  and  down  went  the  soup." 

In  the  fiercely  varying  vicissitudes  of  the  war 
on  this  often-disputed  borderland — the  railroad 
to-day  in  possession  of  the  Government,  to-night 
torn  up  thirty  or  forty  miles  by  Stonewall  Jack- 
son's brigade,  the  personnel  of  the  social  circle 
not  unfrequently  became  strangely  mixed,  some- 
times distressingly  embarrassing  at  the  hotel. 
Both  the  secret  and  the  suspected  sympathizers 
Avith  and  aiders  and  abettors  of  the  rebels  dined 
side  by  side  with  the  Union  officers  in  command 
of  the  post  and  district.  They  even  smoked 
pipes  of  seeming  peace  together  on  the  veranda 
of  the  hotel,  and  sang  sentimental  ballads  to  the 
witching  accompaniment  of  Miss  Mary  on  the 
parlor  piano.     Strange  companionship! 

Gen.  Kelley  was  in  command  most  of  the 
time.  While  his  head-quarters  were  at  the  Glades 
Hotel,  young  James  Dailey  and  a  boon  compan- 
ion of  his  conceived  the  bold  and  daring  project 
of  crossing  the  lines  to  join  the  Confederate 
army.  Both  familiar  with  the  all  but  impene- 
trable trails  in  the  woods  of  the  border  they 
accordingly  laid  their  plans.  A  few  trusty  friends 
were  in  the  plot.  This  proved  successful,  although 
Gen.  Kelley  personally  headed  a  pursuing  party, 
after  the  alarm  was  given  the  next  day. 


78 


^lYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEET. 


Sometime  later,  General  Crook  Avas  associated 
■with  Gen.  Kelley  in  the  command  of  forces  as  • 
signed  to  the  protection  of  the  Baltimore  and 
Ohio  road.  To  this  circumstance  he  owed  his 
acquaintance  Avith  and  subsequent  relations  to 
the  Dailey  family  at  Oakland.  But  at  the  time 
the  incident  which  Ave  are  about  to  relate  oc- 
curred, the  official  head-quarters,  howeA^er,  Avere 
located  at  a  hotel  in  Cumberland,  Marjdand,  a 
most  charming  and  beautifully  picturesque  town 
on  the  road,  half  AA'ay  betAveen  Piedmont  and 
Oakland. 

One  night  in  this  loA'ely  city,  nestling  so  ad- 
mirably in  its  oA^al-shaped  valley  among  innu- 
merable hills,  a  party  of  cavahy  w"earing  the 
blue  uniform  of  the  United  States,  entered  the 
city.  From  all  appearances,  they  were  troopers 
returning  from  a  scouting  expedition  Avith  im- 
portant dispatches.  After  having  taken  the 
strange  precaution  to  capture  their  OAvn  pickets, 
they  galloped  straight  to  the  General's  head-quar- 
ters. Such  was  the  urgent  nature  of  their  impor- 
tant business  that  they  pressed  without  ceremony 
to  the  bedrooms  of  Gens.  Crook  and  Kelley, 
where  these  toil-Avorn  warriors  slept  the  sleep 
of  the  innocent  in  fancied  security.  The  leader 
of  this  audacious  party  was  a  man  of  not  many 
AA^ords.  "  Get  up  and  put  on  your  clothes,"  Avas 
his  rude  greeting  to  each  of*  the  generals  in  turn, 
who  were  dazed  by  being  startled  out  of  a  pro- 
found slumber  by  this  ruthless  summons. 

The  party  Avas  a  band  of  Confederates  in  dis- 
guise, among  Avhom  were  Jim  Dailey  and  his  com- 
panion. They  had  come  to  turn  the  joke  of 
pursuing  them  on  Gen.  Kelley,  to  the  reality  of 
accompanying  them  on  a  reckless  ride  for  the 
dead  time.  In  ten  minutes,  at  the  muzzles  of 
revoWers,  the  two  generals  made  their  toilets, 
and  Avere  mounted  at  the  door  of  their  hotel. 
Thus  surrounded  by  their  A'olunteer  body-guard, 
they  were  led  out  of  the  dark,  silent  and  slum- 
bering city,  and  hurried  off  to  Richmond. 

But  the  magnanimity  of  these  Federal  gen- 
erals to  those  unhappy  Southerners,  whose  lives 
and  property  lay  at  the  mercy  of  both  friend 
and  foe,  on  this  critical  line  of  sectional  demarca- 
tion, secured  the  intercession  of  the  most  poAver- 
fnl  influence  at  the  Confederate  Capitol  to  clamor 


for  their  release.  This  was  early  brought  about, 
and  they  Avere  soon  reinstated  to  their  former 
command. 

This  Avas  not,  however,  the  last  time  that  Gen. 
Crook  Avas  destined  to  be  captured  hj  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Dailey  family,  nor  the  one  of  the  most 
serious  importance  to  himself. 

Sometime  later  he  was  Avounded,  and  borne  to 
the  Mountain  Hotel.  Mary  Dailey,  the  little 
rebel  maiden,  became  his  volunteer  nunse.  No 
sentiment  pervaded  or  swayed  the  courageous 
soul  of  this  sweet  child  of  "Nature  and  of 
Dixie  "  but  the  impulse  of  charitable  pity  for  her 
suffering  foeman,  and  a  zealous  desire  to  over- 
whelm him  with  a  debt  of  deep  gratitude  that 
Avould  incline  him  to  deal  yet  more  leniently  Avith 
her  suffering  people.  Thus,  Avith  a  singleness  of 
unselfish  purposes,  she  labored,  all  unconscious 
that  her  eyes  Avere  steadily  and  surely  entering 
the  depths  of  his  soul,  and  the  gentle  touch  of 
her  delicate  hand  causing  him  to  tremble,  as  she 
daily  ministered  beside  his  couch  of  pain.  Little 
did  she  dream  that  she  was  vanquishing  the 
great  and  gallant  soldier ;  he  Avas  captured  by  the 
sister  as  well  as  by  the  brother. 

It  is  an  old  story,  and  soon  told.  He  then 
planned  to  capture  her  for  aye.  The  sequence 
of  these  conditions  follows  in  due  progression: 
an  altar,  a  ring,  a  little  wife — Miss  Mary  Dailey, 
the  Confederate  heroine  of  border  Avarf are,  is  the 
bride  of  General  Crook,  the  Union  cavalier:  ante- 
thetically  mixed — conquered  conquerer  Avas  he  ! 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

THE    M.\SQUERADING    SEQUENCE. 

"  Sleep,  soldier,  sleep,  tliough  many  regret  thee. 
Who  stand  round  thy  cold  bier  to-day; 
Soon,  soon  shall  the  fondest  forget  thee. 

And  thy  name  Avill  from  earth  pass  away. 
But  there  is  one  that  shall  still  pay  thee  duty. 

Of  tears  for  the  true  and  the  brave. 
As  when  first  In  the  bloom  of  her  beauty, 
She  wept  o'er  the  soldier's  grave." 

—Selections  of  War  Songs. 

When  the  tAvo  Federal  officers  and  the  rebel 
scout  had  disappeared,  the  young  people  Avith 
Uncle  Jake,  reassembled  in  the  same  room,  where 
the  appearance  of  those  untimely  visitors  had 
temporarily  disturbed  them  in  their  diversions. 


THE  MASQUERADING  SEQUENCE. 


79 


When  order  was  again  restored,  they  spent  much 
of  the  remaining  time  in  animated  discussion  oi; 
the  strange  developments  which  they  had  wit- 
nessed between  the  two  Federals,  the  Confeder- 
ate and  Uncle  Jake.  The  two  Confederate  officers 
of  the  party  were  open  in  their  denunciations  of 
Uncle  Jake  as  a  spy  and  informer  against  the  in- 
terest of  the  Confederate  people ;  the  remarks  of 
the  Federal  officers  were  conclusive  on  this  point. 
There  could  be,  according  to  the  opinion  of  the 
former,  no  doubt  as  to  Cloud's  mistrust  in  the  old 
darkey,  or  that  he  deceived  and  misled  the  old 
man,  in  order  to  escape  the  snares  which  he  was 
satisfied  Jake  aided  constantly  in  laying  for 
him. 

To  the  young  ladies,  who  fully  understood 
Jake's  relations  with  themselves  and  Cloud,  and 
thoroughly  comprehended  the  part  which  these 
individuals  played  before  the  Federal  officers,  this 
obstinate  conclusion  of  their  army  companions 
is  extremely  amusing.  They  know  that  to  the 
Northern  army.  Uncle  Jake's  mask  is  impene- 
trable, because  there  is  not  a  shade  of  suspicion 
concerning  his  loyalty  to  the  cause  of  the  Stars 
and  Stripes.  With  Uncle  Jake,  this  suspicion  is 
a  grave  and  serious  rnatter ;  and  more  especially  is 
this  true,  owing  to  the  fact  that  one  of  these  offi- 
cers is  his  young  master. 

As  to  Cloud,  he  has  advanced  greatly  in  the 
estimation  of  his  two  comrades,  while  they  re- 
gard the  two  Federal  officers  in  an  exceedingly 
favorable  light. 

The  masqueraders  arrive  promptl}^,  and  appear  to 
be  highly  satisfied  and  delighted  with  the  entertain- 
ment, which  glides  smoothly  through  the  hours, 
until  the  time  arrives  for  the  interesting  festivi- 
ties to  close. 

The  gay  participants  have  departed,  and  once 
more  the  old  mansion  assumes  its  quiet  tranquillitj^^ 
and  appears  as  though  deserted.  Of  all  the  as- 
sembled guests  of  the  early  evening,  but  one 
lingers  on  the  threshold,  taking  a  more  special 
interest  and  solicitude  in  the  ceremonies  of  bid- 
ding Miss  Corneha  good-night  than  had  any 
other  one  of  her  friends — one  who  has  been  a 
very  particular  favorite  partner  among  the  Fed- 
eral officers,  who  have  been  each  other's  rivals  all 
the  evening  as  to  which  could  first  secure  this 


admirable — to  them — young  lady  for  the  next  set. 
This  individual  was  Jake's  young  master. 

Miss  Cornelia:  "Oh,  Clem,  this  is  terrible  thus 
to  rfleet  and  part  with  you  in  my  own  home. 
How  cruel  is  this  war  to  true  and  loving  hearts!" 

Clem:  "Yes,  darhng,  it  is  indeed  bitter  be- 
yond anything  I  have  ever  before  experienced  ; 
and  my  nature  revolts  against  it.  But  like  every- 
thing else  in  this  troublesome  world,  it  must  end." 

Miss  C :    "  End — yes,    Clem,    that    is    the 

word.  But  for  us,  what  may  not  this  end 
mean?  This  is  a  question  which  I  struggle 
against,  that  many  of  its  answers  may  find  no 
lodgment  in  my  mind,  yet  how  vain  the  eflbrt! 
How  many,  many  chances  there  are  against  us ! 
Think  of  the  numberless  unknown  dangers 
through  which  you  must  pass  almost  daily.  I 
wish  you  would  not  take  such  fearful  risks  as  this 
to  see  me.  Even  j'oung  Cloud,  although  he  is 
almost  entirely  in  the  lines  of  the  enemy,  could 
not  be  induced  to  take  a  risk  like  yours." 

Clem  :  "  I  suppose  he  is  right.  He  is  a  cool- 
headed  boy.  But,  darling,  I  must  leave  you. 
After  I  reach  home  and  change  this  dress,  I  shall 
have  no  time  to  waste  if  I  would  pass  through 
the  enemy's  lines  before  .day-light.  So  I  must 
bid3'ou  good-night." 

Miss    C :    "  Good-night,  Clem.     I  wonder 

when  I  shall  see  you  again.  Take  care  of  your- 
self, for  my  sake." 

Clem:  " One  last  kiss,  darling.  There  now;  I 
am  gone." 

Miss  C :   [Solus.]   "I  Avill  look  through  the 

gloom  at  the  white  figure  receding,  and  hearken 
to  the  sound  of  his  horse's  hoofs,  as  they  grow 
fainter  on  the  frozen  ground.  From  my  chamber 
window  will  I  watch  and  listen,  until  I  hear  him 
leave  home  in  his  true  garb  of  grey,  and  with 
his  armor  on.  How  weird  and  ghost-like  he 
appears  I  Oh  that  I  could  shake  off  these  mis- 
givings, and  experience  another  moment  of 
strength-assuring  confidence. 

There,  now,  I  see  a  light  in  his  room.  How 
quickly  he  has  completed  the  transformation. 
Out  goes  the  light.  In  a  moment,  now,  I  will 
again  hear  the  clatter  of  his  horse's  feet,  as  he 
rides  across  the  field  for  the  wood  which  is  such 
a  friendly  cover.     There!  I  hear  his  foot-steps  as 


80 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY, 


he  goes  down  into  the  stable-yard.  Mercy !  how 
the  least  noise  is  wafted  to-night  on  the  still  and 
icy  air!  The  cold  is  intense.  He  will  surely 
almost  freeze  to  death  riding  for  two  hours 
through  it,  so  soon  after  leaving  the  warm  hall 
below,  heated  from  the  excitements  of  the  l:iall- 
room.     Oh,  Heaven  shield  him ! 

"  There  are  three  instantaneous  shots  at  the 
gate!  Here  comes  his  horse,  like  a  flash  of 
lightning.  Oh,  my  God !  the  saddle  is  empty — 
he  is  shot!  he  is  shot!  There  goes  a  light  to 
the  gate.  It  is  Uncle  Jake  and  Hannah.  Oh, 
pitiless  fate!  It  is  he!  It  is  he!  He  is  dead! 
dead ! 

"What  pitiful  and  heart-rending  screams  poor 
Jake  and  Hannah  are  uttering!  His  poor  sister! 
poor  Leonora!  poor  Leonora! — there  she  goes. 
Oh,  God!  she  falls  beside  his  prostrate  form. 
Listen  to  her  agonizing  cries.  What  is  she  say- 
ing ? — 'My  brother !  oh,  my  brother !  look  at  me ! 
speak  to  me!  It  is  3^our  sister— your  sister 
Leonora!  Oh,  Jake,  he  is  dead!'  She  is  swoon- 
ing, ^ly  poor  heart  is  breaking.;  but  I  must 
alarm  the  house  and  run  to  him.  Poor  Clem, 
your  breath  is  scarcely  cold  on  my  cheek,  and 
are  you  dead!     Oh  cruelest  of  all  fates  !*" 

Leonora:  "  Oh,  Cornelia!  Corneha!  they  have 
killed,  murdered  my  poor  brother!  They  never 
halted  him,  nor  demanded  him  to  surrender." 
They  were  concealed  behind  the  open  gate. 
The  blaze  of  the  guns  has  scorched  his  coat. 
Poor  Clem !  Look  at  him !  Oh,  Cornelia !  I  have  no 
brother  now!  Clem  and  Tim  both  killed  so 
soon  in  this  war.     What  shall  I  do  ?  " 

Cornelia:  "Oh,  Leonora;  and  he  but  a  few 
moments  ago  lightly  bade  me  good-night!  I 
was  watching  restlessly  out  from  my  Avindow,. 
oppressed  with  some  secret  dread,  saw  the 
murderous  blaze,  and  tlien  the  riderless  horse 
come  dashing  up  the  lane !  Oh,  poor  Clem,  how 
little  you  then  dreamed  that  we  were  parting 
forever;  and  that  I,  broken-hearted,  should  so 
soon  be  weeping  over  your  dear  form  all 
inanimate  and  cold!" 

The  next  evening,  there  is  an  open,  new-made 
grave  in  the  little  old  church-yard  on  the  hill- 
side. Down  at  the  mansion  a  plain  black 
coffin  is    being    borne   from    the   parlor   to   the    | 


hearse.  In  the  lane,  in  front,  a  long  funeral 
procession  has  formed.  Behind  the  hearse  fol- 
lows the  family  carriage,  in  which  Cornelia 
Earl,  as  one  of  the  principal  mourners,  has  a 
seat.  Next  in  order  is  Uncle  Jake  and  Aunt 
Hannah,  with  bowed  and  uncovered  heads,  on 
foot.  Then  there  are  a  few  neighboring  car- 
riages, such  as  the  position  of  the  two  armies 
would  permit  to  a>ttend.  After  these  follow 
Maj.  Pleasington  and  Lieut.  Oglethrop,  at  the 
head  of  a  squadron  of  dragoons,  on  foot,  with 
heads  uncovered  and  drawn  and  inverted  sabres. 
Behind  these  the  troopers  follow,'  in  regularly 
formed  fours,  their  horses,  one  man  leading 
eight. 

At  the  grave  the  hymn  "Nearer,  my  God,  to 
Thee,"  is  sung  impressively,  chiefly  by  the  sol- 
diers. Then  the  beautiful  and  solemn  burial- 
service  of  the  Episcopal  Church  is  read ;  and 
the  mortal  remains  of  Capt.  Clem  Fairchild  are 
lowered  to  their  last  long  resting-place.  As 
the  frozen  earth  begins  to  rattle  with  horrible, 
hollow  sound  upon  the  planks,  the  wild  and 
pitiful  bursts  of  grief  and  cries  of  lamentation 
from  Leonora,  Cornelia,  Uncle  Jake,  and  Aunt 
Hannah  rend  the  bitter  frosty  air.  Fainting, 
the  three  women  are  soon  borne  away  from  the 
grave;  and,  alone.  Uncle  Jake's  mournful  wails 
continue. 

The  grave  is  filled,  and  the  native  mourners 
depart.  Then  just  as  the  last  red  glow  of  the 
setting  sun  is  fading  on  the  distant  mountain- 
tops,  the  squadron  is  foi-med,  in  obedience  to 
the  clear,  ringing  voice  of  Maj.  Pleasington,  which 
causes  some  of  the  retiring  citizens,  to  whom  the 
meaning  of  this  manoeuvre  is  unknown,  to  pause, 
and  look  back  in  amazement.  Directly,  the  same 
sharp,  musical  voice  floats  out  on  the  wintr}^ 
air,  "Eeady!  Aim!  Fire!"  There  is  a  bright, 
blazing  flash;  a  volley  rolls  over  the  grave;  its 
echoes  go  reverberating  back  against  the  hills 
and  re-echoing  across  the  neighboring  plains. 
It  is  the  burial  salute — the  last  and  the  highest 
token  of  honor  that  the  soldier  in  the  field  can 
bestow  on  his  dead  comrade  —  thrice  precious 
when  bestowed  by  a  brave  and  generous 
enemy. 

So   ended   the   masquerade-balls   among    the 


THE  PLAINS  OF  MANASSAS  AGAIN. 


81 


out-posts.  So  for  a  time  we  leave  Uncle  Jake 
and  his  Fairies  in  sadness  and  despair.  May  He 
who  is  the  consoler  of  the  broken  hearted — "the 
rock  and  sure  foundation"  in  the  hours  •  of 
need,  watch  over  them  now — watch  over  all  to 
whom  shall  come,  with  the  smoke  of  battle  and 
the  cannon's  thunder,  a  crown  that  is  worn  only 
beyond  the  stars — a  glory  that  is  found  in  the 
Shadow  of  Death. 


CHAPTER   XXII. 

THE    PLAINS   OF   MANASSAS   AGAIN. 

"  Flows  there  a  tear  of  pity  for  the  dead, 
Wide  scattered  o'er  the  ensanguined  plain? 
Come  here !  bathe  thousands  who  are  lowly  laid." 

—MISCELLANEOUS. 

The  great  change  of  base  has  been  made.  The 
Confederate  winter-quarters  at  Centreville  and 
Union  Mills  have  been  broken  up,  and  present 
the  appearance  of  deserted  and  ruined  cities.  No 
more  the  roll  of  the  drum,  sounding  the  tat-too 
and  the  revehe,  is  heard.  The  slow  and  meas- 
ured tread  of  the  sentinel  is  silent  and  still.  The 
bray  of  the  mule  and  the  neigh  of  the  war-steed 
no  longer  disturb  the  solitude  of  the  ghostly 
night.  Desolation  wields  her  sway  indisputed 
and  supreme. 

Even  the  owl — the  lugubrious  chanter  of  the 
dreary  forest  and  dismal  night — has  taken  wing 
and  flown  away  from  this  woe-begone,  famine- 
haunted  region. 

Our  early  friends  of  the  out-post  scenes  are 
scattered ;  their  old  haunts  know  them  no  more. 

Arlington  Heights  and  the  vicinity  of  Alex- 
andria no  longer  resound  with  the  clamorous 
commotion  of  the  "  Grand  Army  of  the  Potomac." 
Long  since  it  has  disembarked  on  the  historical 
shore  of  Virginia,  at  Yorktown. 

Garland  Cloud  is  once  more  in  the  ranks  of  his 
company.  He  has  broiled  oysters,  and  slept  in 
the  trenches  at  Yorktown  many  a  rainy  night. 
He  has  charged  up  to  the  very  trench,  filled  with 
water,  that  surrounded  a  fort,  at  the  battle  of 
Williamsburg,  on  the  retreat  from  Yorktown, 
where  his  comrades  in  the  brigade  fell  like  autumn 
leaves. 

Then  his  Captain,  J ,  whom  we  met  in 


company  with  Cloud,  one  stormy  winter  night, 
at  the  "  Picket  Bivouac,"  was  killed. 

His  former  Colonel — now  Brig.-Gen.  E , 

was  terribly  wounded. 

He  has  passed  through  the  firey  ordeal  of 
Seven  Pines,  that  scourged  his  command  so  ter- 
ribly. He  has  rode  on  the  tempest  of  battle 
through  Cold  Harbor,  White  Oak  Swamp,  and 
Malvern  Hill  unharmed. 

Little  Mac,  as  Gen.  McClellan — a  master  mili- 
tary genius  and  strategist — was  facetiously  called 
by  the  "Boys in  Blue,"  has  lost  his  head  beneath 
the  relentless  stroke  of  the  political  guillotine. 

We  challenge  the  world  to  produce  a  more 
masterful  military  achievement  than  McClellan's 
retreat  from  before  Richmond,  through  the 
Chickahominy  swamp — regarded  by  Confederate 
engineers  as  being  impossible  at  that  time — with 
a  defeated  and  dispirited  armj^,  almost  surrounded 
by  a  victorious  and  an  exultant  enemy. 

Pleasington  and  Oglethrop  have  met  the  shocks 
of  the  impetuous,  indomitable  Ashby,  and  heard 
the  thunder  of  Jackson's  cannon  again  and  again 
in  the  valley  of  Virginia. 

"  The  Army  of  the  Potomac  "  has  once  more 
changed  its  position,  and  returned  to  its  former 
encampment. 

"  The  famous  warrior  on  horseback  "  has  been 
assigned  to  its  command,  and  passed  in  triumph 
over  and  by  the  camps  and  the  ruins  of  the  once 
bristling  parapets  and  frowning  battlements  that 
shed  a  halo  of  terror  about,  and  clothed  in  mystic 
grandeur  the  name  of  Manassas. 

Gen.  Lee  has  broken  up  his  camp  in  front  of 
Richmond,  and  advanced  with  two  invincible 
legions  beyond  the  Rapidan,  to  meet  his  new  an- 
tagonist in  the  open  field. 

His  strong  right  arm — the  immortal  Jackson — 
has  swept  the  enemy  from  the  path  at  Cedar 
Mountain,  where  Pleasington  and  Oglethrop  were 
blended  in  the  perplexing  scene,  and  forced  him 
to  take  shelter  beyond  the  Rappahannock. 

The  houses  at  Culpepper  Court  House  have 
trembled  to  their  foundations  from  the  shocks  of 
the  terrible  artillery  duel  across  the  Rappahan- 
nock. 

This  was  opened  by  Gen.  Lee  as  a  stroke  of 
grand  and  subtle  strategy — a  ruse  that  served  his 


82 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


turn  admirably,  and  deceived  the  enemy  beyond 
the  expectations  of  the  most  sanguine  officers. 

Just  as  the  shadows  of  even'mg  veil  the  antag- 
onists from  each  other's  view,  the  "Boys  in 
Grey  "  observe  batteries  quietly  moving  into  po- 
sition all  along  the  line  occupied  by  the  advance 
troops  of  Gen.  Lee,  whose  main  body  rests  be- 
tween the  Court  House  and  the  railroad  bridge, 
across  the  track  and  below  for  some  distance, 
and  above  to  a  little  county  bridge,  called  Water- 
loo, where  Jackson  is  posted. 

Pope's  army  lines  the  opposite  hills,  facing 
Lee  and  Jackson,  in  formidable  array,  and  in  easy 
range  of  light  field-batteries. 

Before  day-light  the  next  morning  Lee's  ad- 
vance troops  eat  their  frugal  meal, — for  breakfast 
it  could  not  be  termed, — and  are  in  line  of  battle 
in  the  bottom  down  near  the  river. 

Jackson  is  no  longer  at  Waterloo  Bridge ;  but 
other  troops  are  in  the  positions  held  by  him  the 
evenirrg  before. 

Just  as  the  first  grey  light  streaks  the  eastern 
horizon,  a  cannon  fires  on  Gen.  Lee's  left,  and 
sends  a  shell  screaming  down  toward  Pope's 
left;  this  is  answered  by  a  cannon  on  Lee's  right, 
which  sends  a  shell  hissing  up  in  the  direction  of 
Pope's  right. 

Instantaneously  one  blinding  sheet  of  flame 
bursts  from  Lee's  entire  front;  the  ground  trem- 
bles from  the  concussion  of  batteries  as  if  con- 
vulsed by  an  earthquake ;  the  thick  curtains  of 
fog  which  Hne  the  hills  and  hang  low  down  the 
banks  of  the  river  like  a  funeral  pall,  are  suddenly 
transformed  from  veils  of  sable  mourning  to 
transparent  hues  of  the  rainbow,  o  outrival  the 
gayest  scenery  that  ever  graced  a  mortal  stage,  to 
hold  in  rapturous  admiration,  spell-bound  and 
applauding  multitudes. 

Quickly  the  opposite  hills  are  wrapped  in  rival- 
ing flames  of  awful  grandeur;  and  now  high 
above  the  flashes  from  exploding  shells,  knd  new 
terror,  if  not  fearful  beauty,  to  the  brilliant  scene. 

Gen.  E-^ has  crossed  the  river  above.    Heavy 

rains  cause  its  waters  suddenly  to  rise;  and  it 
goes  sweeping  between  the  two  armies  like  a  mad 
and  an  irresistible  mountain  torrent. 

Gen.  E is  cut  off  and  menaced  with  de- 
struction.   He  is  ordered  to  hold  his  position,  and 


at  the  same  time  asked  if  he  could  hold  it,  and  how 
long.     His  answer  is  characteristic  of  the  man. 

"Tell    Gen.   J ,"   he   says,  with  grim  and 

sarcastic  asperity,  "  that  I  cannot  hold  my  position 

at  all ;  but  that  by 1  can  stand  here,  be  cut 

to  pieces,  and  die."  But  he  almost  miraculously 
extricates  his  command  from  a  position  of  won- 
drous peril. 

The  fact  that  he  is  already  across  the  river, 
that  there  are  momentary  indications  that  a  column 
is  about  to  attempt  a  passage  at  Waterloo 
Bridge,  and  that  Lee  is  in  line  of  battle  all  along 
the  bank  of  the  river,  makes  it  clear  to  the  mind 
of  the  Federal  commander  that  the  frightful 
artillery  fire  has  been  opened  and  is  maintained 
with  such  fury,  in  order  to  prepare  the  wg,y  for 
and  cover  an  anticipated  crossing  of  Lee's  army. 
Such  is  true. 

As  a  matter  of  course.  Pope  taxes  his  skill  to 
its  utmost  capacity,  and  devotes  all  his  energy  in 
making  preparations  to  defeat  this  audacious 
presumption.  How  insane  he  must  imagine  Lee 
to  suppose  him  capable  of  such  rash  madness ! 

Betweeij  the  two  embattled  hosts  the  dreadful 
artillery  duel  is  maintained  until  late  in  the  day. 

How  different  is  Lee's  plan  to  cross  the  river, 
from  the  ostensible  one  demonstrated  to  the  per- 
ception of  Cren.  Pope. 

While  the  artillery  duel  is  progressing.  Gen. 
Jackson  debouches  to  the  left,  under  cover  of  a 
dense  forest,  and  marches  up  the  river  above  its 
fork,  where  either  branch  is  fordable. 

In  the  meantime,  the  restless,  dashing  Stewart 
crosses  the  river,  rides  with  audacity  into  the 
camp  of  Gen.  Pope,  and  plunders  his  head- 
quarters. 

Dailey,  Pleasington  and  Oglethrop  are  forced  to 
meet  the  shocks,  and  strive  to  sustain  themselves 
against  the  furious  onslaughts  of  this  redoubtable 
warrior,  "  The  gay  cavalier  of  Dixie." 

While  these  side-scenes  are  progressing,  Jack- 
son is  making  his  famous  flank  movement,  having 
for  its  objective  point  Manassas  Junction,  far  in 
the  rear  of  the  Federal  army,  which  he  speedily 
reaches  and  captures  without  meeting  serious 
opposition. 

When  these  tidings  reach  Pope,  chagrin  and 
consternation  are  no  adequate   terms  to  express 


THE  PLAINS   OF   MANASSAS  AGAIN. 


83 


his  emotions.      Thu  lady  of  the  house  where  he 
liad  his  head-quarters  told  the  story  thus  : 

"  Gen.  Pope  and  his  stafFofficers  had  just  seated 
themselves  at  the  dinner-table  when  the  dispatch 
was  handed  the  G-eneral.  Pie  read  it,  struck  the 
table    violently   with    his    fist,    and    exclaimed, 

'  By ,  I  am  whipped  again !'     They  left  their 

dinner   untouched,  mounted   their   horses,  rode 
away,  and  I  saw  them  no  more." 

The  other  corps  of  Lee's  army  follow  in  Jack- 
son's foot-steps  by  rapid  forced  marches. 

Jackson  is  in  critical  peril.  Nothing  but  hia 
wonderful  genius  and  the  blunders  of  his  adver- 
sary save  him  from  utter  destruction. 

He  is  menaced  on  all  sides,  while  the  great 
mountains  separate  him  from  his  friends  and  from 
Thoroughfare  Gap — the  only  available  passage 
subject  to  seizure  by  the  enemy. 

This  may  be  held  by  ten  thousand  troops 
against  Lee's  combined  legions,  until  Jackson's 
annihilation  is  complete.  But  Jackson  fights 
and  manoeuvres  as  few  others  could  fight 
and  mauoeuvre  in  cases  of  desperate  emergency. 
All  day  long,  on  August  29th,  1862,  as  the 
corps  of  Longstreet  approach  Thoroughfare  Gap, 
the  men  can  hear  the  ceaseless  roar  of  Jackson's 
cannon  rolling  up  in  battle  thunder  far  away 
beyond  the  blue  smoke-capped  mountains. 

Longstreet  finds  Thoroughfare  Gap  in  jDosses- 
sion  of  the  Federal  ai-my,  and  is  thus  forced  to 
halt  late  in  the  afternoon  and  all  night  in  inactive 
suspense.  He  makes  feints,  and  does  whatever 
else  seems  possible  during  the  night;  but  the 
situation  appears  desperate — almost  hopeless. 

However,  to  the  inexpressible  amazement  of 
every  one  in  Longstreet's  command,  daybreak 
reveals  the  astonishing  fact  that  the  road  is  open; 
that  the  Federal  troops  have  abandoned  that  im- 
pregnable stronghold  during  the  night,  and  thus 
lost  an  opportunity  to  strike  Lee  a  mortal  blow. 

Early  in  the  morning  of  August  30th,  there- 
fore, Longstreet  is  able  to  reach  the  field  of  con- 
flict, and  take  up  positions  to  support  and  re- 
lieve his  sorely-pressed  countrymen  of  Jackson's 
corps. 

Now  we  are  once  more  on  the  ensanguined 
plains — the  bloody  stage  of  that  July  Sabbath. 
The  ground  is  the  same;  but  the  antagonists  have 


changed  positions,  and  their  forces  are  more  for- 
midable. Instead  of  raw  troops,  their  ranks  on 
either  side  are  filled  with  trained,  disciplined, 
war-inured  veterans. 

This  day  throughout  there  is  much  desperate 
and  bloody,  but  rather  desultory,  fighting  at  vari- 
ous points  along  the  fine.  There  are  only  partial, 
indecisive  engagements;  but  the  suspense  of 
anxious  expectation  and  foreboding  uncertainty 
is  something  fearful  to  the  contemplation  of  every 
thoughtful  mind. 

With  darkness,  however,  the  firing  ceases  and 
the  silence  of  night  falls  over  the  field.  The  sky 
is  overcast,  and  the  weather  is  oppressively  hot. 

The  Confederates  sleep  on  their  arms  in  battle 
array.  A  large  portion  of  the  Federals  pass  the 
night  on  their  feet,  changing  and  marching  into 
positions. 

The  last  day  of  August  dawns  with  the  ele- 
ments still  overspread  with  gloom.  The  sun  re- 
fuses to  shine.  The  atmosphere  is  close  and 
stifling,  and  fuH  of  dust,  drifting  like  lazily-creep- 
ing masses  of  thick  fog. 

Not  a  breeze  of  air  ruffles  the  delicate  texture 
of  the  aspen-leaf.  Strong  men  gasp  for  breath  in 
the  eady  morning  while  passively  inactive.  A 
breathless  suspense  pervades  the  Confederate  lines. 
The  humblest  mountaineer  feels  that  this  is  a  day 
destined  to  be  recorded,  and  to  pass  down  through 
the  ages  as  historical;  and  all  are  haunted  by  the 
dark  shadow  of  the  Death  Angel's  wing  as  it 
hovers  silently  over  the  heated  and  breathless 
plains. 

The  early  hours  of  the  day  pass  over  a  stillness 
not  unlike  the  solemnity  of  an  audience  at  a 
funeral;  not  even  a  picket  shot  is  heard.  But,  at 
length,  however,  dense  clouds  of  dust  begin  to 
rise  in  front  of  the  Confederate  positions.  This 
is  ominous.  The  storm  is  about  to  burst  forth  in 
appalling  fury.  The  Federal  army  is  advancing 
— moments  are  ages — eternity! 

Jackson  is  along  the  railroad,  behind  the  em- 
bankments and  in  the  cuts,  and  will  receive  the 
shock  of  the  blue  waves.  Longstreet  is  on  Jack- 
son's right  in  the  open  field,  and  will  assume  the 
offensive. 

Now  a  cannon  fires  !  In  another  moment  the 
air  is  black  with  the  smoke  from  exploding  shells ! 


84 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


The  bloody  drama  is  opened,  and  unfolding  on  the 
stage!  What  an  evening  to  this  last  "waning 
summer-day ! 

The  blue  waves  break  against  Jackson's  thun- 
dering breakers  Math  terrific  violence,  only  to  be 
hurled  back  shivered  and  broken.  Groaded  to 
desperation,  again  and  again  they  rush  madly 
upon  the  murderous  embattlements,  but  to  meet 
the  same  disastrous  reception. 

Under  cover  of  the  fearful  hurricane  of  iron 
hail,  the  serried  columns  of  Longstreet  roll  for- 
ward. Pickett's  division — the  Old  Gruard  of  the 
army  of  Northern  Virginia — moves  in  columns 
down  a  slightly  inclining  plane  to  a  ravine  on  the 
edge  of  a  corn-field,  which  gently  inclines  up- 
ward. Here  the  knapsacks  and  blankets  are  de- 
posited, and  a  line  of  battle  is  formed.  Pickett 
is  well  to  the  left  of  Longstreet's  corps,  the  main 
body  of  which  has  almost  level,  and  but  slightly 
timbered  ground  to  traverse. 

Pickett  moves  by  quick-step  through  the  corn- 
field. Shell,  scrapnel,  grape-shot  shriek,  scream, 
whistle,  tear  indiscriminately  through  the  deep 
green  corn  and  the  surging  mass  of  humanity. 

At  tiie  upper  edge  of  the  corn-field  there  is  a 
beautiful  grove  of  timber.  Through  this  Pickett 
moves  at  the  same  steady  step. 

Emerging  from  the  cover  of.  the  trees,  what  a 
spectacle  greets  the  eye !  One  vast  sea  of  blue 
spreads  across  the  plains — line  behind  Hne! 
Bright  armor  and  uniforms  reflect  a  dazzUng 
sheen,  and  brighter  guns  of  polished  brass  gleam 
amid  the  bristling  lines  of  bayonets.  Lazily  the 
Star  Spangled  Banner  droops  from  hundreds  of 
color-staifs,  unruffled  by  so  much  as  a  gentle 
breeze,  until  it  appears  as  though  the  vast  plains 
are  decked  in  the  gay  and  splendid  regaUa  appro- 
priate only  for  the  celebration  of  Independence 
Day. 

The  front  Hne  of  the  Federal  army  stand's  in 
stoic  immobility,  as  if  prepared  to  pass  review. 

Over  to  the  right  of  Pickett,  in  the  open  plains, 
other  divisions  of  Longstreet's  corps  are  rolling 
forward  toward  the  blue  sea  in  admirable  order, 
in  the  face  of  an  iron  and  leaden  tempest  of 
menacing  death. 

Pickett  debouches  from  the  woods  into  the 
open  plain  to  great  disadvantage,  with  his  posi- 


tion so  much  ol)liqued  as  to  render  it  imperatively 
necessary  to  change  front  in  short  musket-range 
of  the  enemy's  hne  of  battle. 

As  he  comes  into  the  open  ground  the  enemy's 
infantry  sends  withering  volleys  to  greet  the  Con- 
federate onslaught;  and,  while  changing  front, 
every  known  missile  of  death  employed  on  the 
battle-field  is  crashing  or  tearing  through  his 
ranks. 

In  his  front  are  a  large  house  and  yard,  sur- 
rounded by. a  picket-fence,  which  his  line  of  battle 
strikes  in  making  the  swing  to  face  the  enemj'. 
This  breaks  his  line,  and  throws  a  number  of 
companies  into  disorder.  But  they  pass  to  the 
right  and  left,  and  when  beyond  the  yard-fence 
they  close  up  the  breach  in  the  line,  which  is 
now  squarely  in  front  of  the  FederaLposition. 

All  this  time  he  moves  with  shouldered  arms 
at  quick-step,  firing  not  a  shot. 

Thus  he  continues  to  advance  on  a  compact 
line  of  battle,  in  the  perfect  order  of  a  dress 
parade ;  for  such  is  the  appearance  each  regiment 
in  the  Federal  front  presents. 

In  Pickett's  advance  a  gentle  declivity  slopes 
down  from  the  Federal  position.  Between  the 
serried  sections  of  infantry  lines,  at  regular  inter- 
vals, are  brass  cannon.  Thus  a  twenty-eight-gun 
battery  is  posted  in  front  of  Pickett ;  and  he  de- 
signs to  capture  these  thundering  scourges. 

This  battery  is  manned  by  United  States  regu- 
lars. Their  guns  were  presented  to  them  by  the 
ladies  of  some  Eastern  towns,  cities,  and  perhaps 
States.  The  recipients  and  custodians  of  these 
beautiful  gifts  had  sworn  to  die  by,  but  to  yield 
them  never. 

Onward  Pickett  still  moves  in  the  face  of  flam- 
ing death,  while  the  wild  huzzas  of  Longstreet's 
a.ssaulting  legions — now  coming  into  close  quar- 
ters— rise  above  the  deafening  roar  of  cannon, 
and  the  unbroken  and  appalling  roll  of  musketry. 
And  yet  on  Pickett's  left,  all  along  Jackson's 
lines,  there  are  tumult  and  carnage  raging  madly 
over  which  demons  might  gloat  to  surfeited  satiety^ 

Now  Pickett  is  within  one  hundred  paces  of 
the  Hne  which  yet  presents  au  unbroken  front  of 
seeming  invincibiHty.  Canister,  grape — double 
charges,  and  rifle-baUs  decimate  his  ranks.  Be- 
hind him  the  ground  is  thickly  strewn  with  grey 


THE  PLAINS  OF  MANASSAS  AGAIN. 


85 


uniforms,  bleeding,  helpless,  lifeless!  Officers 
and  privates  go  down  by  hundreds!  Men  drop 
forward  on  their  faces  so  fast  that  their  com- 
manders conclude  they  are  falling  to  escape  the 
murderous  storm  of  iron  and  lead,  before  which 
it  appears  impossible  for  anything  mortal  to  live 
one  moment;  and  they  actually  take  a  number 
by  the  collar  to  force  them  to  their  feet,  only  to 
find  that  they  will  rise  never  more. 

Onward  the  survivors  move,  closing  up  the 
frightful  gaps  which  at  every  step  rend  their 
ranks. 

Longstreet, — the  Ney  of  the  Southern  army — a 
regular  "bull-dog  of  war," — dashes  back  the  blue 
waves  before  the  impetuosity  of  his  sweeping 
surge. 

Jackson  comes  out  from  his  cover  and  precipi- 
tates his  legions  violently  upon  the  shattered 
ranks  of  his  discomfited  assailants ;  and  as  if  by 
magic  at  this  moment  the  guns  of  Pickett  leave  the 
position  of  shoulder-arms.  They  blaze,  crackle, 
echo  and  reverberate,  mingling  their  deathly, 
discordant  notes  with  the  uproarious  tumult  of 
battle. 

There  is  no  halting.  Forward  the  melting  ranks 
move  with  unchanged  steps,  loading  and  firing 
with  a  rapidity  and  deadly  aim  that  quickly  mows 
frightful  swaths  through  the  late  beautiful  line 
that  stood  arrayed  against  them  in  such  imposing 
martial  grandeur. 

Now  they  are  right  among  the  battery's  thun- 
dering gims.  The  flames  must  singe  their  very 
hair. 

The  supporting  line  sinks  to  the  earth,  or  the 
men  are  swept  away, — metaphorically  lifted  from 
their  feet  and  hurled  back-  upon  their  reserves. 
Flesh  and  blood  are  unequal  to  the  overwhelming 
shock. 

The  guns  are  passed.  Some  gunners,  in  order 
to  escape  being  bayoneted,  fall  down  under  the 
carriages,  as  if  dead ;  but  not  one  abandons  his 
post. 

There  is  a  wild  yell.  A  reserve  colunni  is  rush- 
ing forward  to  re-take  the  battery.  Pickett  re- 
ceives the  shock,  and  checks  the  assault,  while  his 
support  hastens  at  double-quick  OA'er  the  blood- 
slippery  ground. 

The  gunners  rise  up  from  under  the  carriages. 


and  give  the  grey  line  a  reception  of  grape.  In  a 
moment  they  are  either  killed,  wounded,  or  again 
fall  down  under  the  carriages;  but  they  keep, 
their  oath ;  not  one  abandons  his  post  nor  sur- 
renders to  the  enemy  until  too  badly  disabled  to 
perform  further  duty ;  and  their  beautiful  brass 
guns  are  dearly  bought  trophies  to  the  enemy. 

The  Washington  Artillery,  of  New  Orleans, 
comes  up  at  a  sweeping  gallop,  and  forms  between 
the  captured  guns,  even  turning  a  number  of  them 
on  their  late  friends  and  protectors. 

Speedily,  now,  the  Federal  positions  are  all 
carried,  and  their  lines  hopelessly  broken. 

To  complete  the  horrors  of  their  trying  distress, 
the  relentless  squadrons  of  Stewart  charge  with 
pitiless  fury  upon  the  rear  of  the  broken  and 
flying  infautr3^ 

The  benignity  of  the  Creator,  however,  had 
prepared  for  the  discomfited  Federals  almost  as 
miraculous  protection  and  deliverance  as  were 
vouchsafed  the  flying  Israelites  to  shield  them 
from  the  menacing  dangers  impending  at  the 
hands  of  the  pursuing  Egyptians ;  at  all  events, 
they  served  the  Union  hosts  the  same  purpose, 
and  perhaps  saved  them  from  annihilationr 

Bull  Run,  swollen  by  recent  rains,  interposes 
as  a  barrier  to  prevent  a  general  and  overwhelm- 
ing onslaught  all  along  the  Confederate  line. 
Darkness  in  mercy  spread  her  sable  mantle 
over  the  harrowing  scene,  soon  after  the  general 
repulse  of  the  Federal  army,  to  render  effective 
pursuit  impossible. 

Thus  the  Union  army  is  spared  additional 
horror  of  confusion  and  dismay,  inseparable  from 
a  vigorous  and  continued  pursuit. 

The  carnage  was  frightful.  The  wounded  can 
be  estimated  only,  in  comparison  as  to  numbers, 
with  army  corps. 

The  sun  goes  down  on  a  scene  horrible  and 
pitiful  beyond  description. 

Under  two  broken  gun-carriages,  in  the  battery 
above  referred  to,  about  ten  feet  apart,  are  Gar- 
land Cloud  and  Edgar  Harman.  Cloud  under 
one,  with  a  bullet  hole  through  the  body  ;  Har- 
man under  the  other,  with  a  broken  ankle. 

Harman:  "Who  was  that  called  my  name?" 

Cloud:  "It  is  I,  Garland.  Are  you  much  hurt, 
Lieutenant?" 


86 


MYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


Lieut.  H :   "My  ankle  is   broken.     What 

has  happened  to  you,  Garland?" 

Cloud:  "I  have  a  hole  through  my  body. 
Can't  tell  any  more.  That  is  what  they  call 
serious.  A  bad  night  before  us!  It  is  getting 
dark  fast,  and  may  soon  rain.  But  there  are 
thousands  suffering  around  us,  many  doubtless 
far  worse  than  we." 

Lieut.  H :  "Yes,  Garland,  and  many  must 

die  for  Avant  of  attention.  It  is  terrible.  I 
think  half  our  boys  fell  in  taking  this  battery ; 
and  God  only  knows  how  many  of  them  since. 
I  shudder  at  the  thought  of  it." 

Cloud:  "It  will  be  a  woeful  day  in  your 
valley  and  its  neighboring  mountains  when  the 
news  of  this  day's  work  reaches  there,  as  well  as 
in  every  section  of  every  State,  North  and 
South.  But  yonder  are  two  figures  some  dis- 
tance apart,  peering  into  the  faces  of  the  dead, 
assisting  the  wounded,  and  giving  them  water. 
They  are  moving  this  way  right  over  the  ground 
where  we  charged.  There !  The  nearer  one  is 
Maj.  Flowers.  Ho,  there,  Maj.  Flowers!  Come 
here,  please." 

},/[xj_  F :   "Why,  Garland,    I  was  hunting 

you.  I  saw  your  captain,  after  we  made  the  last 
charge,  and  he  told  me  you  had  fallen.  I  would 
have  been  here  much  sooner,  but  as  I  came 
along  over  there  in  the  edge  of  that  skirt  of 
timber,  where  Jackson's  right  charged,  I  found 
Maj.  Pleasington  and  his  friend  Lieut.  Oglethrop 
both  badly  wounded.  I  stopped  to  care  for 
them,  enemies  that  they  are.  They  were  both 
visibly  affected  when  I  told  them  you  had  fallen, 
and  that  I  was  on  my  way  to  seek  you.  Pleas- 
ington said  he  had  been  remarking  to  his  com- 
panion that  he  wondered  if  you  would  find 
them.  I  have  promised  to  return  that  way  and  let 
them  know  your  condition.  Are  you  badly  hurt?" 
Cloud:  "An  ugly  shot  hole  through  the  body 
— one  of  those  wounds  whose  severity  time  alone 
can  determine.  I  tore  up  a  silk  handkerchief, 
which  I  pulled  from  the  pocket  of  this  poor 
artillery  officer  here  by  my  side,  anu  plugged  up 
the  holes  soon  after  I  was  hit,  so  that  I  have  not 
bled  much;  and  I  am  now  suffering  but  little 
pain.  You  are  very  kind  to  come  to  my  relief 
so  promptly,  Major." 


Maj.   F :   "Oh,    Garland,    my    fi-iend!      I 

wish  you  would  call  me  Jesse,  as  you  did  in  the 
olden  time.  Don't  talk  to  me  about  kindness, 
when  directly  or  indirectly  1  owe  you  near  every 
thing  I  hold.  Don't  let  a  petty  rank  come  be- 
tween us." 

Cloud:  "I  love  you  none  the  less,  but  esteem 
you  all  the  more.  But  who  was  that  just  behind 
you.  Major?" 

Maj.  F :  "I  could  not  recognize  him;    he 

was  behind  me,  intently  seeking  some  one." 

Cloud:  "It  is  —  it  is,  father.  Listen  how 
pitifully  he  is  calling  Garland.  He  seeks  me, 
poor  old  man.  Major,  please  tell  him — call  out 
here  is  Garland." 

Maj.  F :  "Here  is  Garland  Cloud,  if  j'ou 

are  seeking  him." 

Col.  Cloud:  "Oh,  Garland,  my  boy,  how 
thankful  I  am  to  find  you  able  to  speak  to  me ! 
I  was  about  to  despair  and  to  begin  to  mourn 
you  for  dead.  Your  comrades  lie  thick  as  the 
autumn  leaves  between  here  andthe  woods;  nearly 
all  are  dead.  I  saw  your  captain,  but  he  could 
tell  me  nothing  more  than  that  he  thought  you 
fell  between  the  woods  and  battery.  You  are 
shot  through  the  body.  Bear  it  like  a  soldier — 
and  a  Cloud.  While  there  is  life,  there  is  hope. 
I  Avill  soon  have  you  away  from  here.  This  is 
a  sad  meeting  for  the  first  time  since  you  left 
home. 

"  I  was  disappointed  in  not  being  able  to  see  you 
during  nor  just  after  the  seven  days'  battle  at 
Eichmond.  Early  in  the  morning  of  the  day  on 
which  I  was  gonig  over  to  visit  you.  Gen.  Jack- 
son started  on  this  campaign.  I  have  com- 
manded a  brigade  since  the  battle  of  Port  Re- 
public, which  has  kept  me  busy.  But  who  is 
this,  Garland,  standing  here  by  you  ?" 

Cloud:  "Maj.  Jesse  Flowers,  father;  a  true 
friend  of  mine." 

Col.  Cloud:  "Maj.  Flowers,  I  am  proud  to 
meet  the  bravest  lad  in  Gen.  Lee's  army.  I  con- 
gratulate you  on  your  rapid  and  well-merited 
promotion." 

Maj.  F :   "  I  am  equally  delighted  to  meet 

j'ou,  Col.  Cloud.  My  promotion  has  been  a  sad 
affair — over  the  graves  of  my  dear  and  superior 
officers.     How  thankful  I  am  to  you  for  calling 


THE  PLAINS   OF  MANASSAS  AGAIN. 


87 


to  see  mother  and  sissie,  and  for  the  kind  visit  of 
your  daughters  to  them.  It  was  a  kindness  they 
highly  prized." 

Col.  Cloud  ;  "  Yes,  I  was  determined  to  see 
them.  I  shall  ever  remember  them  with  kindest 
feelings  of  friendship.  From  your  home  I  went 
directly  to  visit '  The  Angel  of  Consolation,' — Miss 
Carrie  Harman — and  spent  the  night  at  her  father's 
house.  In  her  I  saw  devotion  and  self-denial  for 
the  cause  of  humanity  and  the  suffering  poor 
that  have  never  been  surpassed  in  this  world. 
Many  a  poor  fellow  have  I  seen  die  since  with 
her  name  on  his  lips.  '  I  die,  but  Miss  Harman, 
the  Angel  of  Consolation,  will  care  for  my  little 
children.'  I  would  rather  be  that  girl  than  the 
Queen  of  England." 

Cloud  :  "  Father,  there  is  Miss  Cari'ie's  brother, 
with  a  broken  ankle,  by  that  next  carriage.  Both 
of  you  go  speak  to  him ;  he  is  my  friend." 

Col.  Cloud:  "Lieut.  Harman,  I  am  happy  to 
know  the  brother  of  such  a  sister,  and  I  retract 
nothing  that  I  have  said.  I  regret  to  meet  you 
in  this  plight;  but  I  will  soon  have  you  cared 
for." 

Maj.   F :    "  I   am   pleased   to   know   you, 

Lieut.  Harman,  and  can  assure  you  that  I  heartily 
join  Col.  Cloud  in  his  sentiments  of  regret,  and 
sincerely  trust  that  you  may  save  your  foot." 

Lieut.  H :  "  Col.  Cloud  and  Maj.  Flowers, 

I  am  truly  thankful  to  have  the  honor  of  your 
acquaintance,  and  am  most  grateful  for  the  senti- 
ments of  kindness  and  sympathy  you  express  for 
my  misfortune." 

CoL.  Cloud  :  "  Now,  boys,  I  will  go  and  ob- 
tain means  to  have  you  removed.  Be  patient. 
I  will  be  as  quick  as  the  darkness  and  circum- 
stances will  permit." 

Cloud  :  "  One  moment,  father.  There  are  two 
Federal  of3S.cers  with  whom  I  am  well  acquainted, 
lying  badly  wounded  up  yonder  to  the  left,  in  the 
woods.  If  it  should  be  a  last  favor  which  I  am 
about  to  ask,  please  obtain  their  parole,  and  have 
them,  sent  into  their  own  lines.  Maj.  Flowers 
will  explain  everything  to  your  satisfaction  as 
you  go  along." 

CoL.  Cloud:  "All  right,  my  boy;  I  am  proud 
to  find  in  you  a  spirit  of  such  commendable 
charity."     And  he  then  departed,  and  sought  the 


two  Federal  officers,  Pleasington  and  Oglethrop. 

Col.  Cloud  :  "  Well,  boys,  you  are  in  a  pretty 
rough  fix,  here  in  the  hands  of  enemies  too  poor 
to  take  proper  care  of  their  own  unfortunates." 

Lieut.  Oglethrop  [Startled  from  a  doze] :  "  Oh, 
Pleasington,  is  that  the  long,  grey-whiskered 
Colonel  or  his  ghost,  on  the  same  black  horse, 
peering  at  us  there  through  the  gloom,  and  speak- 
ing to  us  in  a  tender  and  kind  voice?" 

Col.  Cloudj  "  It  is  not  his  ghost.  Don't  be 
alarmed  boys ;  I  am  come  to  you  on  a  mission  of 
mercy  and  kindness." 

Maj.  Pleasington  :  Do  I  dream,  or  do  I  hear 
of  mercy  and  kindness  from  a  Southern  voice, 
not  that  of  Garland  Cloud  nor  Jesse  Flowers?" 

CoL.  Cloud  :  "  You  do  not  dream.  I  am  Gar- 
land Cloud's  father.  You  are  indebted  to  him 
for  this  visit.  He  lies  wounded  over  yonder, 
near  that  white  house,  and  asked  me  to  look  after 
j^ou.  Maj.  Flowers  had  told  him  you  w^ere 
wounded." 

Pleasington  :  "  Merciful  Heavens !  You  Gar- 
land Cloud's  father ;  and  we  have  been  trying  so 
hard  all  last  spring  and  this  summer  to  capture 
or  kill  you ;  and  now  you  are  come  to  offer  us 
kindness." 

Col.  Cloud:  "You  are  powerless  and  harmless 
now — proper  objects  to  receive  the  kindest  offices 
of  humanity.  I  hear  of  you  as  gentlemen  and 
soldiers  waging  civilized  warfare.  As  such  I  re- 
spect you.  It  is  those  cowardly  people  who  burn 
and  pillage,  and  wantonly  make  war  on  the  help- 
less, defenceless  non-combatants,  that  arouse  my 
an^er." 

Lieut.  Oglethrop  :  "  How  magnanimous  in 
you  not  to  kill  me,  when  you  had  disarmed  me 
at  Port  Republic.  I  did  not  expect  to  find  an 
infantry  officer  so  expert  with  the  sword,  and 
such  a  good  horseman." 

Col.  Cloud:  "My  father  was  in  the  dragoons, 
in  the  war  of  1812.  From  a  boy  he  trained  me 
to  ride,  and  use  the  sword.  I  carry  the  same  one 
that  went  with  him  through  that  war.  Your 
escape,  after  I  had  captured  you,  was  sufficiently 
daring  to  atone  for  the  mortification  of  being 
disarmed." 

Maj.  Pleasington :  "I  paid  dearly  for  my  au- 
dacity in  charging  you  at  Cedar  Mountain,  and 


88 


MYSTIC  EOMAl^CES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


again  to-daj^,  when  I  thought  your  men  were  in 
hopeless  disorder." 

Col.  Cloud:  "Boys,  time  presses.  I  have  come 
to  say  to  you  that  you  will  be  paroled  early  in 
the  morning,  and  sent  into  your  own  lines,  so 
that  you  may  go  where  Effie  and  Evalina  can 
nurse  you,  which  will  be  more  agreeable  to  you 
than  the  care  you  would  receive  at  the  hands  of 
our  rude,  uncouth  nurses.  I  have  no  time  to  stay 
and  hear  your  thanks.  Duty  tears  me  away  from 
the  couch  of  my  perhaps  mortally  wounded  son. 
I  cannot  tarry  longer  with  you.     Farewell." 


CHAPTER  XXIIT. 

THE   ANGEL   OF    CONSOLATION. 

"  Be  kind  to  thy  sister— not  many  may  know 
Tlie  depths  of  pure  sisterly  love— 
The  wealth  of  the  ocean  lies  fathoms  below 
The  surface  that  sparkles  above. ' ' 

—From  Be  Kind  To  Loved  Ones. 

By  some  means  Col.  Cloud  sent  a  dispatch  to 
Carrie  Harman,  giving  a  Hst  of  the  killed  and 
wounded  in  the  Mountain  companies  of  his  bri- 
gade, who  Avere  from  the  vicinity  of  her  home. 
This  reached  her  two  days  in  advance  of  the 
Richmond  papers,  containing  an  account  of  the 
battle  of  August  31st,  1862,  on  the  "Plains  of 
Manassas."  As  the  company  to  which  her  brother 
and  Garland  Cloud  belonged,  was  not  in  his  bri- 
gade, no  reference  was  made  to  it  or  them.  The 
list  of  killed  among  the  sturdy  mountaineers  was 
frightful. 

At  once  she  entered  upon  the  sad  and  trying 
task  of  breaking  the  news  to  bereaved  families, 
and  of  offering  them  such  sympathy  as  it  was 
within  the  province  of  human  power  to  bestow. 
But  these  were  cases  for  which  consolation  was 
no  soothing  balm:  it  was  an  antidote  too  mild  to 
meet  the  requirements  of  the  deep  and  desperate 
malady  to  which  it  must  in  vain  be  apphed. 

These  mountaineers  love  with  the  wild,  fierce 
devotion  of  Nature,  in  all  the  grandeur  and  po- 
tency of  its  unsullied  purity;  and  their  grief  is 
equally  unmeasurable,  whenever  terrilile  aifliction 
suddenly  overtakes  them. 

Miss  Harman,  mounted  on  a  spirited,  fleet- 
footed  horse,  her  long  black  hair  flowing  over 


her  shoulders,  and  a  broad-brimmed,  home-mffde 
straw  hat  on  her  head,  hastened  from  cabin  to 
cabin,  with  the  reckless  impetuosity  of  a  trooper 
riding  for  life.  Faster  and  faster,  all  that  day  she 
urged  the  noble  animal  onward  through  the  yet 
burning  heat  of  a  September  sun,  until  her  sad  and 
pathetic  mission  was  fulfilled. 

On  the  night  preceding  the  fourth  day — the 
day  on  which  she  would  finish  this  trying  labor — 
as  she  approaches  the  old  homestead,  which  is 
wrapped  in  the  golden  hues  of  the  radiant  setting 
sun,  and  stands  out  in  bold  relief  on  thte  rising 
ground  in  the  centre  of  a  mountain-encompassed 
valley — one  of  those  rarely-beautiful  spots  of 
earth  that  admits  of  no  comparison,  because  there 
is  nothing  in  this  Avorld  with  which  to  compare 
it,  save  alone  another  valley,  which  lies  some- 
where, like  itself,  nestling  within  the  encircling 
bases  of  the  Eternal  Mountains — she  gazes  on  the 
grand  old  semi-baronial  mansion,  and  contrasts 
it  with  the  rude  huts  within  whose  walls  her 
heart,  so  tender  and  sympathetic,  has  been  so 
rAany  times  Wrung  by  the  sorrow  and  despair  of 
the  inmates  at  the  tidings  her  lips  have  brought. 
She  wonders  why  there  is  such  disproportionate 
inequality  in  the  conditions  of  the  human  family, 
and  why  mCn  war  against  one  another  with  such 
savage  inhumanity,  creating  such  pangs  of  bitter 
sorrow  in  a  world  filled  with  so  much  natural 
beauty,  that  it  should  hold  nothing  but  happiness 
and  peace;  and  she  shudders  with  an  indefinable 
dread  of  reaching  the  house. 

It  is  time  that  news  should  have  arrived  from 
her  brother's  company.  Has  it  come?  What 
will  it  be  ?  Will  a  silent,  unsympathetic  mail- 
messenger  coldly  bring  to  her  the  same  sad  story 
which  she  has  been  imparting  to  other  anxious 
and  loving  hearts  ?  Thus  musing,  she  mounts 
the  steps  where  her  father  is  seated. 

Carrie  :  "  Oh,  father  !  Is  there  any  news  from 
Edgar?" 

H :    '•'iSro,    darling,    not    one   word.     His 

division  is  terribly  cut  up ;  but  no  names  are 
given." 

Carrie  :  "  This  suspense  is  agonizing.  Why 
cannot  we  know  the  worst,  like  these  poor  people 
in  the  mountain  ?  There  is  no  reason  why  Col. 
Cloud,  who  many  of  our  foppish  officers  sneer- 


THE  ANGEL  OF  CONSOLATION. 


cSL) 


ingly  term  a  hoosier  ignoramus,  should  have  a 
long  report  of  the  casualties  in  his  command 
here  three  days  in  advance  of  our  own  class  of 
officers." 

H :   "That  is  true,  Carrie.    But  Col.  Cloud 

is  an  extraordinary  man,  and  a  worker  of  almost 
inexhaustible  energy." 

Carrie  :  "  What  made  him  extraordinary  ? 
Not  education  and  numberless  advantages  en- 
joyed by  men  in  om-  sphere." 

H :  "Nature,  Carrie.     The  natural  always 

excels  the  artificial;  Nature's  handiwork  is  per- 
fect. Cloud  is  a  model  of  her  workmanship,  and 
merits  a  rank  socially  equal  with  any  class  in  our 
country." 

Carrie:  "  We  are  agreed  on  that  point.  I  am 
weary.     Good-night,  father." 

H :  "Good-night,  Carrie;  I  hope  you  may 

sleep  well." 

She  retires  to  her  chamber,  and  there  her  pent- 
up  thoughts  find  utterance. 

Carrie:  [Solus.]  "Merciful  Heaven!  If  father 
only  knew  the  tempest  of  conflicting  emotions 
that  sweep  through  my  breast  and  rack  my  brain, 
he  would  not  imagine  that  balmy  slumbers  and 
tranquil  repose  Avill  be  my  comfflrting  companions 
to-night.  Nothing  but  broken,  unref  reshing  sleep 
and  hideous  dreams,  with  their  spectral,  ghost- 
like shadows,  will  haunt  and  startle  me  this  night 
through. 

"  Those  poor  women  wringing  their  hands  in 
despair;  their  Httle  children  clinging  in  terror 
around  them;  their  mingled  shrieks,  wails,moans, 
and  sobs,  are  pictures  that  will  be  flitting  be- 
fore my  vision,  and  sounds  of  frightful  discord 
that  will  be  distracting  my  ear  whenever  weary 
Nature  asserts  her  sway,  and  lulls  me  into  the 
shadowy  realms  of  dream-land. 

"  My  poor,  dear,  only  brother,  Avhere  are  you 
to-night?  Is  your  spirit  hovering  near  me,  to 
witness  my  restless  anxiety  and  grief  when  the 
dread  news — war's  accursing  legacy — comes? 
Heaven  shield  and  preserve  him,  I  pray.  And 
Jesse 'Flowers, — the  boy  hero,  the  little  major, — 
where  is  he?  Oh,  my  God!  spare  me  the  ordeal 
of  bearing  to  the  '  Angels  of  the  Mountain'  a 
bitter,  cruel  cup  of  woe.  And  Garland  Cloud, — 
the    mountain    scout    and   tempter   of   fate — I 


Avonder  if  his  faith  in  the  protecting  arm  of  the 
guardian  angel  that  shall  ward  off  danger  until 
the  destined  dark  hour  comes,  is  well  founded, 
and  has  still  preserved  him.  Surely  some  super- 
human power  shields  his  gallant,  noble  father. 

"How  strange  that  the  magical  influence  of 
that  recently  obscure  and  unknown  boy  should 
control  me,  and  stimulate  me  to  such  wonderful 
degrees  of  exertion,  and  nerve  me  to  endure  such 
incredible  fatigue !  Why  do  I  crave  his  praise 
and  esteem?  It  is  because  he  saved  my  brother, 
and  is  brave  and  chivalrous.  But  he  seems  never 
to  appreciate  my  labors  but  for  their  own  sake  and 
that  of  the  cause  in  which  they  are  rendered. 
Yet  why  should  he  ?  Are  not  all  his  heart,  soul, 
and  life  devoted  to  that  cause  ?  Apart  from  it 
and  its  relations  his  thoughts  never  stray." 

The  next  autumn  eve  Miss  Harman  dismounts 
in  front  of  her  home,  much  wondering  why  the 
grand  old  portico  is  deserted,  and  her  father 
nowhere  to  be  seen. 

Her  labors,  in  their  present  sorrowful  form,  are 
finished;  the  last  scene  of  mourning  in  her  juris- 
diction, so  far  as  she  knows,  has  been  visited. 

She  walks  wearily  up  the  gravel  path  and  the 
broad  stone  steps,  and  enters  the  spacious  hall. 
There  she  utters  a  little  scream,  and  exclaims : 
"Oh,  Edgar!  Edgar!  my  dear  brother,  is  it  you, 
and  wounded?" 

Edgar:  "Yes,  sissie,  it  is  I.  But  don't  be 
alarmed.  It  is  only  in  my  ankle.  I  have  come 
home,  my  sister,  to  be  comforted  by  '  The  Angel 
of  Consolation.' " 

Carrie  :  "  Oh,  Edgar !  thank  God  that  it  is 
no  worse.  But  pray  do  not  begin  making  light 
of  your  poor  sister  so  soon.  Where  did  you  get 
that  sacrilegious  appellation?" 

Edgar:  "Pardon;  but  not  so  hastily,  my  little 
sister.  God  forbid  that  I  should  make  light  of 
you.  There  is  no  one  else  in  this  world  that  I 
am  prouder  of  than  you,  and  the  noble  mission  of 
mercy  in  which  you  are  engaged. 

"And  in  relation  to  that  blessed  name  which  I 
have  just  called  you,  if  you  had  heard  it  fall  from 
the  same  hps,  under  the  same  circumstances  as  it 
did  when  it  first  greeted  my  ears,  you  would  not 
style  it  sacrilegious. 

"Lying    on  the  field  of  battle,  perfectly  help- 


90 


MYSTIC  KOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


less,  in  the  deep  gloom  of  the  last  fading  rays  of 
twihght,  surrounded  by  the  shrieks  of  the 
Avounded  and  the  groans  of  the  dying,  Col.  Cloud 
and  Maj.  Flowers,  Avho  were  seeking  and  helping 
the  wounded,  met  for  the  first  time  in  their  hves, 
not  ten  paces  from  me.  Col.  Cloud  had  not  uttered 
a  dozen  sentences,  including  the  remarks  of  intro- 
ductory formality,  before  I  was  startled  to  hear 
the  markedly  emphatic  words :  '  Carrie  Harman, 
the  Angel  of  Consolation.  Many  a  poor  fellow 
have  I  seen  die,  Avith  her  name  on  his  lips, 
consoled  by  the  thought  that  she  will  not  let 
the  Httle  children  suffer.  I  would  rather  be  that 
girl  than  the  Queen  of  England.'  In  a  few 
moments  I  was,  although  a  stranger  to  both 
made  known  to  them.  The  Colonel  affirmed 
that  he  would  not  retract  a  word,  and  that  the 
brother  of  such  a  girl  should  be  cared  for.  Long 
before  day  my  wound  was  properly  dressed,  and 
I  was  in  an  ambulance,  in  a  special  train,  on  my 
way  home.  But  for  [that  man,  I  would  not  be 
here  to-night,  nor  for  many  a  day  to  come." 

Carrie:  "Thank  God,  I  begin  to  reap  my  re- 
wards. The  secret  prophecy  that  first  induced 
me  to  engage  in  this  cause,  is  being  fulfilled;  and 
here  is  my  dear  bi  other,  one  of  its  first  fruits, 
saved  once  more.  What  a  debt  of  gratitude  the 
Clouds  are  heaping  up  against  our  family!" 

Mr.  H :   "Yes,  my  children,   greater  than 

we  can  ever  cancel,  even  were  Garland  and  Edgar 
to  exchange  sisters." 

Edgar  :  "  Poor  Garland,  the  Confederacy  is  his 
bride ;  and  I  fear  that,  as  far  as  he  is  concerned, 
she  wiU  soon  be,  if  she  is  not  now,  a  widow. 
The  poor  boy  is  desperately,  if  not  mortally 
wounded.  He  was  within  ten  feet  of  me.  I 
heard  the  surgeon  tell  his  father  that  he  would 
have  to  be  moved  on  a  litter;  and  then  they 
conversed  in  a  low  tone  for  a  few  moments. 
The  Colonel  came,  and  took  leave  of  me,  and  re- 
turned to  Garland.  I  could  not  hear  what  they 
said  until  as  the  Colonel  was  turning  away  to 
mount  his  horse,  to  rejoin  his  command,  I  heard 
Garland  say,  '  May  God  bless  and  preserve  your 
father ! ' 

"  As  the  brave  old  man  rode  past  me  he  wns, 
sobbing  audibly,  as  if  his  poor  heart  would  break. 
What  a  trial  for  a  father  thus  to  leave  a  son,  and 


resume  the  stern,  rough  duties  of  an  active  com- 
mander ! 

"As  the  ambulance  rolled  away.  Garland  sang 
out,  'A  race  now.  Lieutenant,  who  will  be  the 
first  back  to  duty.' 

"  Oh,  my  God!  how  my  heart  bled  thus  to  leave 
the  poor  boy !" 

Carrie  :  "  What  do  you  think  became  of  him 
after  you  left  ?  " 

Edgar  :  "  His  father  had  made  provision  for 
his  care ;  but  I  am  not  able  to  say  what  they  were. 
Circumstances  were  not  favorable  for  making  any 
desirable  arrangements.  But  what  is  the  matter 
with  you,  sissie  ?     You  are  as  pale  as  a  ghost." 

Carrie:  "I  was  thinking  of  that  poor  fathers 
struggle,  and  thtf  bitter  pangs  it  must  ha*'e  cost 
him  to  leave  his  son ;  and  that  but  for  that  same 
father's  kindness,  you  would  have  been  left  in  the 
same  condition ;  and  I  blush  with  shame  to  say 
it,  but  I  was  thinking  of  your  aristocratic  unkind- 
ness  to  that  poor  boy  in  the  early  montlis  of  the 
war." 

Edgar:  "Yes;  and  I  thank  God  that  it  is 
unknown  to  his  father.  Poor  Garland  will  carry 
the  secret  pangs  which  those  cruel,  private 
Avrongs  caused  him  to  suffer,  concealed  from  the 
world  in  his  generous  heart,  to  the  grave.  I  am 
cured  of  my  aristocratic  follies.  But  my  being 
at  home  now,  you  can  attribute  to  Col.  Cloud's 
esteem  for  '  The  Angel  of  Consolation.'  " 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

THE     FIELD     OF     GETTYSBURG. 

"  But  soft !  our  step's  o'er  a  brave  young  nation's  tomb : 
An  Empire's  dust  lies  supulcbred  liere  : 
Oh,  come,  do  not  molest  this  defenceless  urn  : — 
•Tis  Dixie's  grave — far  more  than  Waterloo." 

Various. 

Summer,  18G3 — that  interesting  season  when 
"May  showers  "bequeath  "June  flowers," — 
comes  to  witness  gigantic  developments  on  tlie 
American  continent. 

"The  Armies  of  the  Potomac"  and  "Northern 
Virginia"  occupy  much  the  same  positions  as- 
sumed directly  after  the  battle  of  Chancellorsville ; 
Hooker  and  Lee  in  command. 

Hooker  failed   at  Chancellorsville  to  demon- 


THE  FIELD  OF  GETTYSBUEG. 


91 


strate  a  prowess  of  strategic  skill  and  military 
genius  requisite  to  enable  him  successfully  to  cope 
with  Lee  in  playing  desperate  games  on  the 
great  chess-board  of  life  and  death.  At  Chancel- 
lorsville  he  was  most  sadly  checkmated. 

Since  Chancellorsville,  Lee  has  been  intensely 
studying  their  chess-board,  watching  his  antago- 
nist, and  planning  for  him  a  surprising  game. 

However,  Hooker  is  no  contemptible  rival: 
thus  Gen.  Lee  esteems  him. 

To  say  that  G-en.  Joseph  Hooker  was  not  a 
match  for  Gen.  Eobert  E.  Lee,  is  no  disparage- 
ment to  the  former. 

Early  in  June,  Lee  decides  to  move.  It  is  a 
grand  conceptiSn.  Few  great  captains  whose 
illustrious  names  grace  the  2">ages  of  history, 
save  perhaps  alone  Napoleon  I.,  Avould  hazard 
its  possible  consequences. 

But  with  Lee,  continued  inactivity  might 
prove  a  greater  disaster  than  even  the  failure  of 
the  move  itself  was  likely  to  entail. 

It  requires  an  iron  will  thus  to  decide  to  make, 
and  an  indomitable  courage  to  attempt,  this  move ; 
yet  Lee  seems  not  to  hesitate. 

Numerous  feints,  cavalry  expeditions  and 
other  exciting  ruses  are  employed  to  divert  the 
attention  of  the  enemy  from  the  real  move 
contemplated. 

JSTumerically,  Lee's  army  is  much  inferior  to 
that  of  Hooker's.  It  is  the  only  barrier  between 
Hooker's  army  and  Richmond. 

According  to  military  tactics  and  established 
precedents  in  the  scientific  schools  where  arts  of 
war  are  taught,  for  Lee  to  oblique  either  to  the 
.right  or  to  the  left,  is  to  expose  not  only  his  flank 
to  disastrous  attacks,  but  his  line  of  communica- 
tion— the  road  to  the  Confederate  Capitol — to 
seizure  by  the  enemy. 

That  he  would  dare  this  perilous  venture,  must 
appear  to  the  mind  of  Gen.  Hooker  too  absurd 
for  serious  attention,  if  not,  indeed,  for  any  con- 
sideration whatever. 

But  be  this  as  it  may,  history  tells  the  story. 
Lee  makes  the  move  under  cover  of  clouds  of 
cavalry.  When  Hooker  awakens  to  a  realization 
of  the  situation,  Lee  is  no  longer  in  his  camp : 
the  road  to  Richmond  is  open;  but  Washington 
is  menaced. 


Lee  has  suddenly  broken  up  his  camp,  boldly 
passed  from  the  front  of  his  adversary,  turned 
his  right  flank — thus  securing  advantage  of  posi- 
tion baflling  Hooker's  powers  of  remedy,  and 
forcing  him  to  hasten  to  the  defense  of  Washing- 
ton. This  he  accomplishes  with  admirable 
success. 

He  is  checkmated  beyond  the  bounds  of  con- 
sistency or  reason,  yet  he  does  all  there  is  for 
him  to  do  in  the  direction  of  counteracting  the 
impending  consequences  of  having  allowed  him- 
self to  be  out-generaled.  From  this  point  to 
Gettysburg  Lee  moves  triumphantly. 

On  the  inhabitants  of  Gettysburg  the  bright 
sunshine  of  the  morning  of  July  1st,  1863,  casts 
but  a  gleam  of  ominous  and  portentous  gloom. 
They  know  legions  of  foemen  are  at  their 
doors.  This  is  a  beautiful  place  and  a  sublime 
locality. 

The  region  about  Gettysburg  is  composed  of 
picturesque  hill,  wavy  green  forest,  undulating 
plain,  and  craggy,  precipitous  ravine,  interspersed 
ever  and  anon  with  bright,  clear,  silvery  brook- 
lets and  rifls,  chiming  their  rippling  murmurs 
of  melody,  as  they  glide  along,  gladdening  their 
grass-  and  flower-bordered  margins,  grouped  in 
such  proportions  as  to  make  a  picture  of  match- 
less loveliness.  Set  in  a  frame  circlet  of  great 
blue  mountains,  it  is  colored  in  all  the  varied 
hues  which  conspicuous  thrift  and  intelhgent 
husbandry  can  bestow. 

All  Nature  is  startled  by  the  wild  shouts  of 
foemen,  the  terrific  roll  of  musketry,  and  the 
reverberating  peals  of  thundering  cannon. 

To  the  good,  quiet,  peaceable  citizens  of  this 
hapless  region,  who  have  only  read  of  those 
Avarlike  machines,  the  tragic  drama, — which  has 
selected  for  its  stage  their  orchards  bending  under 
burdens  of  fruit,  their  gardens  decked  with 
delicious  viands  and  rare  flowers,  and  their 
fields  crowned  with  golden  harvests  of  ripening 
grain,— is  not  utterly  divested  of  all  the  terrors 
associated  in  the  minds  of  the  human  family 
Avith  the  dread  annihilation  of  the  Day  of 
Judgment. 

Early  in  the  day  the  gaUant  Gen.  Reynolds,  of 
the  Federal  army,  falls.  Nearly  all  day  long 
there  is  obstinate  and  steady  fighting. 


92 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


The  First  and  the  Eleventh  Corps  of  the  Fed- 
eral army  sustain  the  brunt  of  the  shocks  of 
this  day.  The  van  of  Lee's  army,  led  by  Gen, 
Heth,  of  Hill's  corps,  is  first  and  early  on  the 
field; 

Providentially,  as  it  seems,  G-en.  Wadsworth, 
of  the  Federal  army,  marching  from  the  village 
of  Emmitsburg,  hears  the  familiar  sound  of 
battle  thunder,  hastens  at  double-quick  through 
Gettysburg,  and  strikes  the  advancing  Con- 
federate column  barely  in  time  to  seize  and 
occupy  a  range  of  hills  that  overlooks  the  place 
from  the  north-west,  in  the  direction  of  Cham- 
bersburg. 

Just  about  this  time  the  brave  Reynolds  is 
killed  while  making  a  personal  reconnoissance. 
Here,  prostrated  on  his  face,  with  a  ball  through 
his  neck,  he  baptizes  the  soil  which  gave  him 
birth,  with  his  life-blood. 

Gen.  Doubleday  assumes  command;  but  is 
forced  by  the  sheer  pressure  of  numbers  to  fall 
back  precipitately  to  Seminary  Hill,  a  little 
west  of  the  village. 

The  Eleventh  Corps  arrives,  and  Gen.  Howard 
assumes  command.  Thus  encouraged  by  reen- 
forcements,  the  Federal  troops  arrest  the  tide  of 
disaster  about  to  overwhelmn  them.  But  about 
one  o'clock,  p.  m.  they  are  furiously  assailed  by 
Ewell's  corps,  directed  to  the  field,  while  march- 
ing from  York,  by  hearing  the  thunder  of 
battle. 

Thus  outflanked  and  outnumbered,  utterly  dis- 
heartened, the  Eleventh  Corps  wavers,  breaks, 
and  flees  in  helpless  rout.  The  First  Corps  is 
forced  to  follow  or  be  annihilated.  The  Federal 
hospitals  and  wounded  are  thus  left  in  the  pos- 
session of  the  Confederates.  Nearly  half  the 
Federal  troops  engaged  are  dead,  Avounded  or 
prisoners. 

The  situation  appears  desperate,  hopeless,  amaz- 
ing and  incomprehensible!  The  Confederates 
merely  occupy  the  grand  amphitheatre  of  hills 
north  and  west :  they  do  not  advance. 

Is  it  Fate  that  stays  their  forward  movement — 
the  mysterious,  mighty,  invisible  hand — the  hand 
of  Him  who  presides  "  over  the  destinies  of  na- 
tions !"  Thus  it  seems  :  there  is  no  opposition  to 
prevent  their  advance. 


The  broken  lines  of  the  Federals  take  posses- 
sion of  Cemetery  and  Culp's  Hills,  both  of  which 
might  be  occupied  by  the  Confederates;  but 
they  seem  content  with  the  results  of  the  day. 
Round  Top,  another  formidable  eminence,  re- 
mains in  possession  of  the  Federal  army. 

The  shadows  close  over  the  defenders  of  their 
soil  and  their  fire-sides,  discomfited  and  dispirited, 
as  the  light  of  day  fades,  and  darkness,  in  benig- 
nant mercy,  spreads  her  thick  mantle  over  the 
earth,  suspending  for  a  time  the  savage  strife 
and  fiendish  carnage  on  this  ensanguined  field. 

The  Union  army  passes  the  night  in  bringing 
up  and  posting  reenforcements,  collecting  strag- 
glers from  the  rout,  and  strengthening  its  posi- 
tions, while  the  Confederates  rest  in  apathetical 
inactivity. 

The  Federals  have  positions  to  strengthen, 
already  rendered  formidal^le  by  Nature.  They 
hold  the  keys  of  Gettysburg,  considered  as  a 
battle-ground. 

Cemetery  Hill,  south  of  the  town,  is  a  com- 
manding position;  Culp's  Hill  almost  as  im- 
portant; while  Round  Top  is  invaluable.  All 
of  these  are  not  in  the  hands  of  the  Confederates, 
because  the  "  God  of  battles  "  Avilled  that  they 
should  halt,  and  not  occupy  these  points  whence 
would  issue  the  turning  tide  of  battle  and  the 
palm  of  victory. 

In  the  meantime,  Gen.  Hancock  comes  upon 
the  field.  With  the  experienced  eye  of  a  trained 
soldier  and  skillful  commander,  he  recognizes  and 
approves  the  great  advantages  of  position  in 
favor  of  the  Federal  army.  Gen.  Mead,  who  has 
succeeded  Gen.  Hooker  as  Commander-in-Chief 
of  the  Army  of  the  Potomac,  selects  Gen.  Han- 
cock for  this  momentous  duty.  Undoubtedly  he 
knows  and  properly  appreciates  his  man :  cer- 
tainly he  does  not  mistake  his  abilities. 

Proof  of  this  obtains  in  the  fact  that  Mead  de- 
fers to  Hancock's  judgment  as  to  the  most  prom- 
ising battle-ground,  and  abandons  that  selected 
by  himself  in  person  in  favor  of  the  one  recom- 
mended by  his  abler  lieutenant. 

With  favorable  opportunities,  Hancock  would 
have  been  the  peer  of  Lee  as  a  commander. 

As  a  gentleman  and  true  soldier,  he  is  the  equal 
of  any  man  of  any  age  or  country. 


THE  FIELD  OF   GETTYSBURG. 


93 


During  the  night,  the  main  body  of  the  Federal 
army  arrives  in  the  vicinity  of  Gettysburg,  and 
G-en.  Mead  comes  to  the  front. 

Such  is  the  situation  upon  •which  dawns  the 
second  day  of  July.  It  passes  in  comparative 
quiet,  with  only  an  occasional  picket  shot,  until 
about  the  middle  of  the  afternoon. 

At  this  hour  Longstreet  hurls  his  legions 
with  the  impetuosity  of  an  avalanche,  and  with 
all  its  destructive  force,  upon  Sickles ;  and  makes 
the  memorable  charge  through  the  peach-orchard, 
near  the  little  brick  house.  Sickles  is  beaten  back 
in  great  confusion,  and  sustains  frightful  loss,  a 
part  of  which  is  his  own  leg. 

In  this  struggle  the  Confederates  make  a  des- 
perate effort  to  reach  and  possess  Round  Top, 
which  Gen.  Sykes  barely  prevents  them  from 
accomplishing.  This  failure  is  a  terrible  disaster 
to  the  Confederates.  Before  they  can  withdraAv 
across  the  plain,  they  are  furiously  assailed  by 
Gen.  Hancock  with  a  large  force.  Their  loss  is 
fearful.  Longstreet  encounters  his  match  in 
"bull-dog"  tenacity  in  the  open  field. 

Near  the  foot  of  Round  Top,  Kilpatrick,  wnth 
his  cavalry,  charges  Hood,  to  prevent  the  cap- 
ture of  the  Federal  ammunition  train  which 
lies  back  in  the  direction  of  Chambersburg. 
Ewell  carries  some  strong  positions  and  portions 
of  the  Federal  works  well  up  Culp's  Hill. 

While  these  scenes  are  developing,  Stewart 
and  the  Federal  cavalry,  twelve  miles  away,  at 
Hanover,  measure  the  prowess  of  their  arms  in 
wielding  flashing  blades  of  polished  steel.  Thus 
Stewart  is  held  engaged,  and  prevented  from  ob- 
taining the  information  that  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac  is  arriving  on  "The  Field  of  Gettys- 
burg,"— information  that  would  be  of  inestimable 
value  to  Gen.  Lee. 

The  second  day  ends  in  a  deeper  gloom  for 
the  Federal  army  than  the  first,  and  the  third 
and  last  day  dawns. 

Indescribable  is  the  suspense  of  the  hour. 
Deep  anxiety,  but  fixed  and  immovable  resolu- 
tion, are  clearly  and  unmistakably  depicted  on 
every  feature  alike  of  the  raw  reserves  and  the 
war-worn,  grim-visaged  veterans. 

The  world  looks  on  in  wonder,  and  shudders 
at  the  thought  of    the    appalling  spectacle  that 


the  sun  of  this  day  is  destined  to  go  down  upon. 
Everywhere  it  seems  to  be  realized  that  this 
day  is  to  decide  all. 

The  preparations  on  both  sides  are  prodigious. 
From  the  commanders-in-chief  down  to  the 
humblest  private  in  the  ranks,  all  appear  to  under- 
stand and  appreciate  the  stupendous  magnitude 
of  the  stakes  for  which  they  are  about  to  play 
in  this  desperate  game. 

The  Northern  troops  are  marshalled  in  the 
cause  of  preserving  the  Union.  But  at  the  pres- 
ent moment  they  are  stimulated  by  that  same 
formidable  incentive  which  has  before- actuated 
the  Confederates,  and  most  powerfully  aided 
them  to  their  success, — that  of  repelling  the  all- 
devastating  demon  of  war  from  ravaging  and 
laying  waste  their  own  beautiful  land.  This  now 
is  in  their  favor,  and  weighs  against  their  in- 
vaders. And,  moreover,  the  supernatural  genius 
and  legionary  name  of  "Stonewall"  Jackson  is 
no  longer  against  them. 

The  daring  Sonthmen  have  their  very  existence, 
as  they  now  believe,  at  stake.  They  rebelled 
against  the  asserted  authority  of  the  National 
Government.  In  this  they  assumed  desperate 
chances :  the  alternative  of  becoming  abject  pro- 
vincial slaves,  with  all  the  possible  and  attendant 
penalties  of  treason. 

This  morning  their  bright  little  Star  of  Empire 
shines  brilliantly  in  the  zenith  of  its  glory.  Thus 
l^oised,  it  trembles  and  flickers  amid  the  contend- 
ing tempests  of  battle  which  hurl  their-  fury 
against  it  with  desperate  resolution,  to  precipitate 
it  from  its  enviable  pinnacle  down  into  the  abyss 
of  everlasting  darkness  and  oblivion,  there  to  re- 
main eternally  extinct. 

On  this  fated  field  they  are  entangled  in  the 
toils  of  a  mortal  mistake :  that  of  neglecting  to 
seize  the  vital  positions  the  first  day;  worse  yet 
is  to  be  their  error:  that  of  assaulting  these  all 
but  imjiregnable  ramparts,  now  strengthened  by 
thirty-six  hours  of  labor,  the  work  of  an  army 
inspired  by  desperation  and  the  startling  prompt- 
ings that  instinctively  admonish  its  performers  of 
the  dreadful  necessity  of  self-preservation. 

Moreover,  Gen.  Lee's  lieutenants  hesitate;  do 
not  promptly  obey  his  orders,  or  suggest  a  differ- 
ent plan  of  battle  at  one  point,  at  least,  on  the 


94 


MYSTIC   EOMANCES   OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


line  where  the  action  should  be  progressing  in 
compliance  with  the  original  plan  and  orders. 

Accustomed  to  rely  on  Jackson  to  act  up  to 
the  requirements  of  emergencies  developed  by 
sudden  and  unpropitious  circumstances,  he  seems 
to  have  overlooked  this  important  feature  when 
issuing  the  orders  of  this  his  first  great  battle 
since  the  one  in  which  his  able  associate  fell. 
However,  had  his  commands  been  proui])tly 
obeyed,  and  had  all  his  subordinates  fulfilled  the 
expectations  of  their  chief,  this  would  not  excuse 
the  croAA^ning  mistake  of  Gen.  Robert  E.  Lee's 
brilliant  military  career — that  of  assaulting  the 
craggy  steeps  on  the  field  of  Gettysburg. 

It  is  presumable,  hoAvever,  that  he  was  igno- 
rant of  the  fact  that  "  The  Army  of  the  Potomac  " 
was  on  the  field^  and  that  he  relied  upon  the 
irresistible  momentum  of  his  hitherto  invincible 
legions  to  overAvlielm  the  weaker  and  dispirited 
troops  in  his  front ;  then  to  beat  the  others,  com- 
ing to  their  relief  in  detail.  But  this  Avas  not 
Gen.  Lee  in  his  true  character.  Perchance  the 
finger  of  Destiny,  hitherto  propitious,  Avas  guid- 
ing him  in  jjaths  of  destruction. 

The  se/^uel  of  "  The  Field  of  Gettysburg "  is 
indicated  by  the  Avords,  fraught  Avith  melancholy, 
Hancock!  Pickett!  Cemetery  Hill ! — or  thus  it 
proves  to  the  Confederacy. 

With  other  features  of  this  scene  we  shall, 
therefore,  refrain  to  deal. 

Now  the  earth  trembles  from  the  incessant 
shocks  of  hundreds  of  cannon.  From  one  end 
to  the  other  of  the  far  extended  lines  an  un- 
broken sheet  of  flame  blazes  Avith  the  continuous 
uniformity  of  evenly  regulated  blast-furnaces; 
and  the  roll  of  musketry  •  is  as  steady  and  un- 
fluctuating as  the  beat  of  angry  waves  on  a  rock- 
bound  coast;  intermingling  with  these  are  the 
maddening  shouts  of  charging  hosts ;  and  the  air 
is  filled  with  the  shadoAvs  of  the  departing  spirits 
of  the  dying. 

Cemetery  Hill  thunders  defiance.  There  the 
soldierly  bearing,  the  intrepid  spirit,  the  indomit- 
able will,  and  the  heroic  courage  of  Hancock  are 
unmistakably  perceptible. 

These  restore  order  ;  these  inspire  confidence. 
His  genius  is  everywhere  conspicuous.  Li  the 
outUnes  and  construction  of  his  defenses :    in  the 


disposition    of  his  batteries  and   troops   its  indi- 
cations stand  out  in  terribly  teUing  grandeur. 

Cemetery  Hill  is  a  f  roAvning  battlement,  a  seeth- 
ing, fiery  A'olcano,  belching  forth  its  hissing 
lava  in  volumes  and  torrents  of  deathly  destruc- 
tion. It  is  the  awful  prize  Avhich  the  Confederates 
purpose  to  seize.  Thus  they  hope  to  overAvhelm 
the  Federal  army,  and  in  this  they  reckon  not 
without  foundation,  provided,  hoAvever,  that  they 
can  storm  and  hold  the  dreadful  Hill.  When  an 
easy  prey  they  would  not,  attempted  not,  to  grasp 
it.  NoAV,  when  a  forlorn  impracticability,  upon 
which  depends  the  fate  of  a  nation — the  grandest 
stake  ever  ventured  on  one  single  issue  of  rash- 
ness— they    are    ready    to  rush  up  its   appalling 


Look  yonder  noAv !  There  is  the  "  Old  Guard  " 
in  battle  array !  Pickett  looks  across  the  plain 
and  up  the  hill  to  the  summit.  What  madness ! 
What  a  journey  to  contemplate !  But  such  is  his 
lot. 

The  end  is  near.  This  is  the  supreme  throAV 
for  the  grand  prize  in  this  desperate  game. 

There  they  go — the  legions  of  Pickett !  Hoav 
grandly  they  move !  What  splendid  order  in  the 
face  of  that  tornado  of  canister  and  grape !  Hoav 
steadily  their  grey  Avaves  roll  across  that  plain  of 
death !     They  step  quickly  at  shouldered  arms ! 

The  regiments  are  Avell  filled.  See  how  far  the 
colors  are  apart !  Look  Avhat  long  lines  the  di- 
vision makes !  An  army  in  itself — ten,  twelve 
thousand  muskets — there  must  be  more.  They 
are  about  to  charge  Cemetery  Hill;  they*  are 
about  to  try  and  break  the  enemy's  line.  DeA'oted 
Virginians !  What  a  noble  sacrifice !  Up  the  Hill 
they  go !  Look  how  rapidly  the  regimental  colors 
are  drawing  nearer  one  another  1 

Now  they  are  concealed  in  the  blaze  and  smoke. 
There  bursts  the  men's  wild  huzza.  They  are 
storming  the  heights ;  the  guns  are  silenced. 
The  Virginians  are  on  the  Hill.  Is  there  any 
force  left  to  hold  it? 

They  are  attacked  by  the  reserves.  It  is  lost. 
The  wild  vociferous  cheers  of  the  triumphing 
Federals  are  heard  above  the  roar  of  the  battle's 
storm ;  they  are  rolling  on  down  the  slope. 

Pickett's  division  is  annihilated.  "  The  Field  of 
Gettysburg"  is  lost.     The  Confederacy   has  re- 


THE  FIELD   OF   GETTYSBURG. 


95 


ceived  lier  death  blow.  Her  star  has  set  in  the 
darkness  of  eternal  night. 

This  tells  the  story.  Pickett's  failure  on 
Cemetery  Hill  decides  the  battle  of  G-ettysburg, 
and  seals  the  doom  of  the  Confederacy. 

The  history  of  this  field  is  indelibly  written  in 
letters  of  tears  and  of  blood.  The  mournful 
wails  of  a  nation  will  rise  above  it,  and  ascend 
to  Heaven,  crying  pitifully  against  the  bhghting 
curse  of  civil  war — the  blood  of  brothers  by 
brothers  shed — ten  thousand  times  that  of  Abel 
again  and  again  multiplied. 

Every  house,  the  friendly  shade  of  every  tree, 
grove,  orchard,  is  an  improvised  hospital.  For 
miles  around,  the  country  is  transformed  into  one 
vast  appalling,  ghastly  burying-ground. 

Pickett's  cUvision  melted  away  in  the  white 
heat  of  the  battle  flame,  and  perished  on  the 
field. 

The  great  Confederate  waves  which  were 
hurled  with  such  terrific  impetuosity  upon  the 
opposing  breakers,  at  other  points  along  the  line, 
were  shattered,  broken  and  rolled  sullenly  back 
as  the  baffled  billows  of  the  angry  deep  recede 
from  the  headland  boulder  upon  which  their 
fury  has  been  spent  in  vain. 

The  Confederates  were  foiled,  and  forced  to 
retire,  leaving  the  flower  of  their  army  on  the 
field ;  but  they  were  not  routed. 

Their  adversaries  received  serious  mementoes 
of  the  shock — so  great  that  had  the  results  ex- 
tended no  farther  than  the.  mere  abstract  issues 
of  the  conflict,  the  advantages  gained  could  not 
be  termed  a  decisive  triumph. 

Yet,  nevertheless,  the  palm  of  victory  wa:^ 
theirs;  the  ultimate  fruits  of  the  day  were  con- 
clusive, and  probably  saved  the  Union. 

The  shattered  fragments  of  Lee's  army  fall 
back ;  re-form ;  face  the  enemy,  and  prepare  to 
receive  the  onslaught  of  their  vanquishers  with 
cool  desperation,  such  as  sectional  pride  and 
individual  heroism  alone  can  inspire. 

Thousands  of  Southerners  from  the  advanced 
lines,  that  made  the  desperate  charges,  are  cut 
off  from  the  main  body  of  their  comrades  and 
captured  when  the  swiftly  turning  tide  breaks 
against  them.  Let  us  look  for  a  moment  at  a 
group  of  these  discouraged  warriors  under  guard 


in  an  open  field,  and  hear  what  two  of  them 
have  to  say. 

Gen.  Cloud:  "Why,  Garland  boy,  how  do 
you  happen  to  be  here?  When  I  last  parted 
with  you  on  the  field  of  Manassas  I  never  ex* 
pected  to  see  you  again.  The  doctor  said  you 
could  not  live  twenty-four  hours.  This  is  a 
fatal  field  to  us — a  sad  day  for  the  South  and 
poor,  dear,  old  Virginia.  Half  my  command 
remains  on  the  field.  I  feel  as  though  I  will 
never  be  able  to  smile  again." 

Cloud  :  "  A  spent  ball  knocked  me  senseless, 
on  top  of  that  fatal  Cemetery  Hill  yonder,  just 
as  we  took  it,  and  when  consciousness  returned 
I  was  a  prisoner.  Oh,  father,  the  '  Old  Guard 
of  the  Army  of  Northern  Virginia'  has  made  its 
last  charge,  captured  its  last  battery;  you  will 
never  more  behold  Pickett's  division,  unless  you 
could  be  permitted  to  go  over  on  that  infernal 
hill  and  see  it  buried.  I  do  not  beUeve  that  a 
thousand  men  returned ;  and  they  are  nearly  all 
dead,  those  who  were  left  behind.  But  how  were 
you  captured  ?  " 

Gen.  Cloud:  "When  they  were  beating  us 
back,  in  the  last  final  struggle,  my  horse  was 
killed  under  me.  My  right  foot  hung  in  the 
stirrup.  The  poor  nigger,  my  constant  com- 
panion on  every  field  from  Romney  to  this,  fell 
on  my  leg ;  and  before  I  Avas  able  to  extricate 
myself  I  was  a  prisoner." 

Cloud:  "Since  you  are  a  prisoner,  father,  I 
am  exceedingly  thankful  that  we  are  together. 
Amid  all  our  misfortunes,  do  you  not  regard  this 
circumstance  as  being  fortunate  ?" 

Gen.  Cloud  :  "  Only  for  this  night.  They 
will  separate  us." 

Cloud  :  "  I  am  aware  that  tlaey  ivould  separate 
us.  It  is  for  this  one  night,  and  this  only,  that  I 
am  thankful  on  the-  score  of  our  being  together. 
I  fully  understand  that  this  is  the  last  night  we 
are  to  pass  together  before  the  war  closes.  It 
may  be  the  last  one  on  this  side  of  eternity. 
But  is  it  not  enough  to  be  thankful  for,  that  we 
are  permitted  to  pass  one  night  together  in  this 
long,  dark,  cruel,  trying-war,  and  that  the  first 
one  of  our  captivity?  Often  in  this  cheerless 
world,  the  highest  ecstasies  of  a  life-time  have 
been  crowded  into  the  brief  space  of  one  night." 


96 


IklYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GKEY. 


Gen.  Cloud:  "Yes,  Garland,  but  nothing 
ecstatic  can  live  one  moment  amid  scenes  like 
these,  unless  it  be  the  departing  spirits  of  the 
poor  fellows  now  dying  around  us,  if  their  dim 
•eyes,  as  they  emerge  from  their  suffering  tene- 
ments, can  behold  the  open  gates  of  Heaven. 
You  are  too  young,  my  boy — your  mind  and 
spirit  too  elastic  and  bouyant,  properly  to  esti- 
mate and  duly  appreciate  the  gravity  of  the 
situation  at  this  bitter  moment,  either  of  our- 
selves personally,  or  of  the  South." 

Cloud:  "Pardon  me  father;  but  you  are 
laboring  under  an  erroneous  impression.  I  see 
utter  ruin  and  hopeless  slavery,  as  conquered 
subjects,  for  the  South  and  her  poor  people,  who 
have  loved  her,  if  not  wisely,  oh  how  truly  well ! 
For  ourselves,  I  see  ahead  of  us  months — 
dreary,  tedious  months,  in  the  gloom  of  a 
Northern  prison,  and  perhaps  a  miserable  death 
as  traitors.  But  yonder  comes  Maj.  Pleasington 
straight  to  us.  We  will  resume  our  conversa- 
tion after  he  leaves  us." 

Maj.  Pleasington  :  "  How  are  you.  General 
and  Garland  ?  I  have  been  riding  .among  your 
wounded.  I  hoped  not  to  find  you  there.  I 
Avas  riding  by  up  the  road,  and  recognized  the 
General.  Regret  to  find  you  prisoners,  but 
since  I  do  find  you  captives,  I  am  glad  you  are 
in  no  worse  phght.  You  will  not  long  remain 
in  custody.  The  little  Colonel,  Jesse  Flowers, 
where  is  he  ?     Is  he  safe  ?" 

Gen.  Cloud  :  "  We  are  both  reasonably  well, 
save  some  bruises.  Accept  our  thanks,  Major 
for  this  visit,  and  your  kind  expressions.  Col. 
Flowers  was  unhurt  a  few  moments  before  my 
horse  fell.  He  has  been  in  my  brigade  since  the 
battle  of  South  Mountain.  He  has  not  been 
absent  from  duty  since  he  entered  the  army, 
and  has  never  received  a  scratch.  I  beheve  he 
is  safe." 

Cloud:   "How  about  Oglethrop,  Major?" 

Maj.  P :  Oh !  the  poor  lad  was  wounded 

in  Kilpatrick's  charge  on  Hood — an  ugly  flesh 
wound  in  the  arm.  I  guess  he  is  at  home  before 
this  time.  How  did  you  come  out  with  your 
Avound,  Garland,  received  at  Manassas  ?" 

Cloud :  "I  was  a  long  time  at  death's  door, 
concealed  in  an  upper  room  of  a  house  about 


six  miles  from  the  battle-field,  near  the  Sudley 
Ford  road.  In  about  two  months  I  was  re- 
moved to  a  remote  point  in  the  mountain,  where 
I  remained  until  January,  when  I  was  able  to 
set  out  to  seek  my  command,  which  I  found  in 
North  Carolina.  This  is  my  first  important 
battle  since.  How  did  you  and  Oglethrop 
fare  ?" 

Maj.  P :   "  We  both  reached  our  homes 

very  soon.  We  were  well  nursed,  and  recovered 
by  Christmas. 

"  Oglethrop  came  down  to  the  city  for  the  holi- 
daj^s  before  rejoining  his  regiment.  We  rejoined 
our  command  about  the  middle  of  January. 
Oglethrop  was  very  happy.  He  was  engaged  to 
Evalina,  with  the  consent  of  her  parents.  Mr. 
Mountjoy  was  prepossessed  with  the  matrimonial 
candidate;  and  the  most  favorable  yet  purely 
fortuitous  circumstance  that  could  possibly  occur, 
transpired  to  aid  him  in  overcoming  the  opposi- 
tion of  the  mother. 

"  Col.  Worthington  returned  home  in  season 
for  Christmas  festivities,  and  consummated  an  en- 
gagement with  Miss  Cassandra.  This  circum- 
stance and  Col.  Worthington's  interest  in  the 
cause  of  Oglethrop,  overcame  Mrs.  Mountjoy"s 
opposition,  and  she  consented  to  give  him  her 
youngest  daughter  for  a  wife. 

"Immediately  after  the  permanent  establish- 
ment of  peace,  if  all  the  i")arties  are  then  living, 
there  will  be  a  grand  quadruple  wedding  at  the 
Mountjoy  mansion.  » 

"Mrs.  Mountjoy  is,  however,  still  uncomiiromis- 
ing  in  her  opposition  to  a  match  between  Eflfie 
and  I,  and  unshaken  in  her  determination  that 
Arnold  Noel  shall  win  Effie.  He  is  in  the  navy, 
and  out  at  sea.  Garland,  do  you  ever  hear  anj-- 
thing  about  Uncle  Jake  and  his  young  mistress, 
and  his  dead  young  master's  sweetheart  ?  " 

Cloud  :  "  I  went  down  there  before  setting 
out  for  my  command.  Both  mansions  and  Uncle 
Jake's  cabin  are  in  ashes.  Leonora  Fairchild, 
Cornelia  Earl,  and  Uncle  Jake  are  in  Richmond, 
where  they  have  devoted  their  lives  to  nursing 
their  sick  and  wounded  countrymen." 

Maj.  P :  "Well,  gentlemen,  I  will  hasten 

to  arrange  for  your  parole.  Expect  me  early  to- 
morrow.    Good-night." 


THE  FIELD  OF  GETTYSBUKG. 


97 


Maj.  Pleasington  rides  away. 

GrEN.  Cloud  :  "Garland,  that  is  one  grateful, 
magnanimous,  noble  young  man.  Do  you  believe 
he  can  get  us  paroled?" 

Cloud  :  "  Certainly  I  do.  There  is  no  doubt 
about  it." 

Gen.  Cloud  :  "  Well,  then  we  are  very  fortu- 
nate indeed." 

Cloud  :  "But  let  us  consider  the  subject  in  the 
light  that  we  would  have  considered  it  had  he 
not  found  us.  Let  us  see  what  we  can  obtain 
from  this  little  night,  either  pleasant  or  useful, 
while  we  are  together.  It  is  ours  now.  Let  us 
profit  by  the  privileges  of  these  hours,  and.  em- 
ploy them  in  arranging  plans  connected  with  our 
dark  future. 

"As  soldiers,  we  have  done  our  duty.  Should 
Ave  live  to  see  the  gloomy  end,  that  now  appears 
inevitable,  our, poor,  desolate,  mourning  country 
will  demand  much  of  us,  in  aiding  to  bind  up  and 
soothe  the  desperate  wounds  which  we  have 
helped  to  inflict  upon  her.  For  my  part,  I  do 
not  intend  to  hesitate  about  entering  upon  those 
duties  nor  flinch  from  their  performance,  no  mat- 
ter what  personal  unpleasantness  they  require  me 
to  endure.  The  opportunities  of  this  night  we 
shall  never  see  again." 

Gen.  Cloud  :  "  Your  sentiments  and  force  of 
reasoning  amaze  me.  I  have  unjustly  estimated 
your  first  remarks.  But  in  what  way  would  you 
employ  the  night  ?  " 

Cloud  :  "  You  would  trust  me  either  with  your 
hberty  or  your  life,  would  you  not,  father?" 

Gen.  Cloud  :  "  Unhesitatingly ;  but  what  a 
question!" 

Cloud  .  "  You  do  not  wish  to  go  to  prison,  nor 
do  you  want  to  remain  inactive,  tramelled  by  the 
sacred  obligations  of  a  parole,  while  the  remnant 
of  your  comrades  continue  the  hopeless  struggle 
to  obtain  better  terms  when  the  end  does  come. 
Rather  than  accept  either  alternative,  you  would 
not  hesitate  to  lead  the  charge  over  again,  in  a 
forlorn  attempt  to  take  and  hold  that  cruel  hill  of 
death." 

Gen.  Cloud  :  "  Certainly  I  would  not.  But 
what  can  you  mean  ?  " 

Cloud:  "Lay  your  head  nearer  to  mine;  I 
must  tell  you  softly  and  cautiously." 


Gen.  Cloud  :  "  Now,  my  boy,  I  am  ready  to 
listen  to  you." 

Cloud  :  "  Father,  I  mean  to  eat  my  breakfast, 
if  they  have  any  to  give  me,  and  if  they  have  not, 
to  fast  with  the  Confederates  to-morrow  morning 
in  their  lines.     Are  you  with  me  ?  " 

Gen.  Cloud  :  "  What  reckless  madness.  Gar- 
land. It  is  simply  an  impossibility.  We  are 
closely  guarded  in  the  very  centre-rear  of  the 
Federal  army.  We  cannot  pass  the  guards,  who 
immediately  surround  us.  Even  were  we  beyond 
these,  there  are  numerous  others  to  stop  us  be- 
fore we  could  reach  the  out-posts;  and  there 
we  would  find  a  compact  skirmish-line  almost  as 
solid  as  a  line  of  battle,  probably  withm  less  than 
two  hundred  paces  of  a  similar  body  of  our  troops. 
I  have  heard  many  wild  stories  about  your  dare- 
devil recklessness  beyond  the  advance-lines  and 
on  the  battle-field  which  I  did  not  believe;  but 
now  I  have  overwhelming  testimony  of  their 
truthfulness.  I  have  often  wondered  why  you 
were  not  promoted.  It  is  now  clearly  explained. 
The  authorities  dare  not  trust  your  rashness. 
You  would  not  hesitate,  I  plainly  perceive,  to 
attack  a  division  with  a  single  company,  if  you 
had  the  command  of  so  many  men.  I  am  pained 
to  find  this  true." 

Cloud  :  "  Well,  father,  I  much  regret  to  leave 
you  here.  This  day  I  charged  that  fiery  hill. 
It  was  in  obedience  to  orders  from  my  com- 
manding officer.  Worse  than  ever  before  my 
poor  country  now  demands  and  requires  my  ser- 
vices. In  attempting  to  place  myself  in  a  posi- 
tion to  render  them,  I  am  not  less  performing  a 
duty  than  when  I  responded  to  that  fatal  order, 
and  moved  into  the  flaming  mouth  of  that  life- 
destroying  volcano,  belching  forth  in  torrents  its 
showering  missiles  of  murder.  I  go,  father,  and 
without  an  order,  save  the  promptings  of  my 
conscience,  which  are  now  with  me  more  potent 
than  my  dear  father's  rebuke. 

"  In  all  that  I  have  done,  for  which  I  am 
termed  rashly  wild,  it  has  been  of  my  country, 
and  not  of  myself,  that  I  thought.  For  my 
country's  sake  I  have  been  cautious  and  prudent. 
Never  once  have  I  been  more  rash  and  i-eckless 
than  circumstances  justified,  as  the  results  have 
always  proved. 


^rySTIC  EOIMANCES   OF   THE  BLUE  A^'D  THE   GKEY. 


"  Father,  you  have  been  a  steadily  rising  officer, 
from  a  Heutenant  to  a  brigadier-general.  You 
have  been  constantly  occupied  with  important 
duties  which  daily  devolved  upon  you,  in  con- 
nection with  your  command.  With  sword  in 
hand,  you  have  led  your  men  again  and  again  into 
the  jaws  of  death,  and  cheered  and  encouraged 
them  to  stand  before  the  storming  avalanche  of 
overwhelming  numbers  at  Antietam  and  Freder- 
icksburg. But  of  the  minutije,  the  smaller  details, 
on  the  out-posts,  you  are  profoundly  ignorant,  save 
in  theory.  I  know  all  your  theoretical  problems : 
they  are  on  the  end  of  my  tongue  every  word  of 
them  at  will." 

"By  a  flickering  camp-fire,  often  in  the  deep 
solitude  of  a  wilderness,  all  alone  in  the  wintry- 
midnight,  I  studied  infantry  and  cavalry  tactics 
and  army  regulations  until  I  committed  every 
word  to  memory.  In  camp,  on  the  march,  and 
on  the  battle-field  have  I  witnessed  their  prac- 
tical utility.  But  to  the  solitary  scout  and  the 
lonely  picket,  beyond  the  lines,  and  on  the  far- 
thest outpost,  they  are  utterly  worthless  in  cases  of 
extreme  emergency.  There  the  man  soon  learns 
that  he  must  rely  on  himself,  and  be  governed 
bjr  circumstances.  It  is  there  that  •  the  close, 
industrious  observer  learns  the  moral  of  human 
nature,  under  the  pressure  of  exhausting  labor, 
and  exposure  to  sudden,  unexpected  starthng 
dangers. 

The  Federal  troops  are  exhausted  from  fatigue. 
They  know  that  our  army  is  beaten,  and  that 
they  are  in  no  danger  of  being  surprised  by  a 
night  attack.  They  will  sleep;  the  night  will 
be  dark.  Many  a  time  have  I  placed  myself  in 
greater  peril  and  more  treacherous  pitfalls  than 
this,  when  they  were  on  the  alert  far  more  than 
they  will  be  to  night ;  and  I  am  going  to  escape 
from  here." 

Gen.  Cloud:  "I  will  accompany  you,  if  my 
leg  will  permit." 

Cloud:  "Oh,  I  do  not  propose  to  walk.  I 
have  quite  often  mounted  myself  where  the 
horses  were  scarcer  and  far  harder  to  obtain  than 
they  will  be  to-night." 

Gen.  Cloud:  "Well,  Garland,  you  are  more 
and  more  a  mystery  to  me.  What  time  do  you 
propose  starting?" 


Cloud:  "  Some  time  about  one  o'clock.  Xow. 
father,  you  are  going  with  me.  You  are  in  mr 
sphere  of  service.  You  must  trust  me  implicitly. 
We  will  take  no  chances  of  being  fired  on,  at  \enst 
not  until  the  last  moment,  at  the  extreme  danger 
line.  If  we  are  captured  before  reaching  that 
point,  why,  we  can  be  no  w.orse  off  than  we  are 
now.     So  let  us  drop  this  subject. 

"I  know  you  are  weary  and  want  to  sleep, 
and  that  my  boyish  nonsense  will  not  interest 
you ;  but  at  all  events,  my  father,  I  want  to  talk 
to  you  all  this  night,  every  minute  that  circum- 
stances will  admit." 

Gen.  Cloud:  "Let  us  talk  my  boy;  I  am 
more  than  willing.  You  more  than  interest, 
you  astonish,  me.  I  begin  to  hope  that  I  have 
unjustly  estimated  you." 

Cloud:  "That  is  mainly  the  tenor  of  my 
subject. 

"  By  apparently  providential  circumstances, 
the  road  to  render  my  country  valuable  services 
around  and  beyond  our  pickets,  was  laid  open 
before  me.  I  presented  the  question  to  the 
proper  officer,  who  regarded  it  as  sufficiently 
feasible  to  assign  me  to  duty  on  that  line. 

"The  circumstances  just  referred  to  transpired 
partially  as  a  direct  result  of  my  befriending 
young  Pleasington  when  he  lay  wounded  at 
Manassas.  Out  of  that  simple  act,  many  other 
circumstances  beneficial  both  to  the  service  and  to 
individuals,  have  sprung — things  already  familiar 
to  you. 

"One  night  I  took  upon  myself  Edgar  Har- 
man's  guard  duty,  when  I  believe  his  death 
would  have  resulted  from  his  performing  it. 
Personal  gratitude  to  that  young  patrician  did 
not  prompt  me.  Between  us  there  was  no 
individual  love.  But  he  was  my  brother  soldier. 
Duty  to  my  country  and  to  the  cause  of  humanity 
prompted  me  to  relieve  him.  Out  of  this  little 
act  directly,  and  befriending  Pleasington  in- 
directly, have  sprung  'The  Soldiers'  Family 
Relief  Society'  and  '  The  Angel  of  Consolation.' " 

Gen.  Cloud:  "Why,  Garland,  are  you  con- 
nected with  that  puzzling  mystery  ?  Do  tell  me 
all  you  know  about  it." 

Cloud  :  "On  conditions  that  you  never  divulge 
your  knowledge  until  the  war  is  ended." 


THE  FIELD   OF   GETTYSBURG. 


99 


Gen.  Cloud:  "Certainly,  boy;  I  will  hold  it 
sacred." 

Cloud:  "The  Harmans  were  grateful  for  my 
act.  Miss  Carrie  overstepped  the  boundary  line 
of  class  formality,  and  wrote  me  a  letter,  breath- 
ing beautiful  sentiments  of  gratitude  and  pledges 
of  the  undying  friendship  of  her  family  to  our 
family.  Courtesy  compelled  me  to  reply,  which 
1  did  briefly  and  indifferently. 

"About  this  time  the  wildest  stories  relative 
to  my  services  as  a  scout  were  circulated. 
Miss  Harman  wrote  to  me  most  entreating 
letters,  urging  me  to  send  an  account  sometimes, 
giving  her  family  the  true  particulars  of  my 
most  thrilling  adventures.  I  most  obstinately 
set  my  face  against  this;  and  I  fear  my  blunt 
replies  were  almost  uncivil ;   but  she  persisted. 

"  I  read  a  good  many  distressing  letters  from 
the  poor  families  of  mountain  soldiers.  One 
cold,  sleety  night  in  December,  lying  in  a  bed 
of  leaves,  under  a  rock-cliff  down  beyond  our 
out-post,  I  could  not  sleep.  I  had  no  fire.  So  I 
was  forced  to  think.  Under  such  circumstances 
a  man  thinks  of  a  great  many  very  absurd  things, 
some  of  which  are  often  unreasonable  because 
they  are  never  attempted.  This  night  I  con- 
ceived the  bold  and  grand  idea  of  enlisting 
Carrie  Harman  in  the  cause  of  the  suffering 
families  of  our  mountain  comrades.  The  next 
day  I  wrote  to  her  that  in  reply  to  her  late  letter 
I  regretted  I  could  not  comply  with  her  request, 
unless  upon  her  solemn  promise  not  to  divulge 
the  contents  of  my  narratives  while  I  lived  and 
the  war  continued ;  and  that,  as  matter  of  course, 
under  such  restrictions,  she  would  not  wish 
my  interdicted  statements. 

"  To  my  astonishment,  she  quickly  rephed  that 
she  was  too  selfish  to  have  shared  them  with  the 
public;  and  hence  my  "conditions  harmonized 
with  her  inclinations. 

"I  immediately  wrote  her  about  thirty  pages 
of  cap,  detailing  particulars  of  the  out-post  ser- 
vice that  I  have  never  unfolded  to  any  other 
person ;  and  in  this  same  letter  was  the  plan  for 
organizing  '  The  ReUef  Society,'  which  I  fear- 
lessly asserted  would  be  to  me  substantial  mani- 
festation of  her  gratitude  for  my  kindness  to  her 
brother,  and  the  only  proof  of  it  I  would  ever 


expect,   or  even  accept.     With   the  results  you 
are  sufhciently  familiar. 

"  Regularly  she  sends  me  detailed  reports  of  her 
good  labors ;  and  I  send  her  accounts  of  my  evil 
work.  I  wanted  to  tell  you,  father,  while  I 
could,  because  no  one  in  this  world  dreams  that 
a  single  line  has  ever  passed  between  Miss  Har- 
man and  I. 

"This  original  proposition  of  mine  to  her,  you 
would  have  branded  as  unpardonable  and  pre- 
sumptuous folly.  Like  it,  father,  has  been  all 
my  dare-devil,  reckless  rashness — with  an  object 
in  each  separate^  act,  directly  to  benefit  our 
cause. 

"  So  of  this  to-night,  and  of  all  I  accomplish 
until  the  Confederacy  is  dead. 

"  Then  I  shall  mourn  over  her  grave,  as  I  have 
mourned,  do  and  shall  mourn  every  day  of  her  ex- 
istence, over  the  cause  that  created  her,  and  go 
on  laboring  to  assist  in  benefiting  and  in  pro- 
moting the  interests  of  the  tillers  of  the  soil — the 
poor  of  my  native  and  dearly  beloved  but  fated 
Sunny  South.  To  her  I  have  devoted,  I  do  de- 
vote, I  will  ever  devote — my  life." 

GrEN.  Cloud  :  "  Grod  bless  you,  my  boy  You 
are  a  herd.  Now  I  understand  Miss  Harman's 
scarlet  face  whenever  your  name  was  mentioned ; 
this  secret  explains  it. 

"  But  beware  of  falling  in  love  with  her.  Re- 
member the  traditional  curse  that  for  over  five 
hundred  years  has  rested  upon  all  the  male  mem- 
bers of  our  family  who  have  become  involved  in 
love  affairs  with  ladies  in  high  hfe  or  of  noble 
birth.  One  of  our  ancestors  pronounced  that 
curse  in  a  dungeon,  where  for  over  forty  years 
he  had  been  confined  because  he  loved  a  noble 
lady  who  also  loved  him.  It  is  said  that  no  less 
than  ten  of  our  race  have  since,  for  the  same 
cause,  suffered  either  imprisonment  or  assassina- 
tion; and  that  in  every  instance  their  affections 
were  reciprocated  by  the  ladies ;  and  within  my 
father's  memory,  his  uncle  proved  his  love  for  a 
beautiful  and  aristocratic  lady  with  his  life. 

"Miss  Harman  is  an  earthly  angel.  Unques- 
tionably, either  on  account  of  gratitude  or  es- 
teem, or  both,  you  exercise  a  wonderful  influence 
over  her.  But  remember  that  aU  in  her  sphere 
are  not  like  her — angels." 


100 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


■  CLorD  :  "I  have  for  Miss  Harman  a  divine  ad- 
oration, similar  to  that  I  cherish  for  the  sister  of 
charity  who  nursed  me  so  devotedly  -when  I  was 
wounded,  back  fi-om  the  margin  of  the  grave ; 
but  nothing  more. 

"  Father,  I  must  tell  you  that  I  am  continually 
haunted  by  something  hke  a  presentiment  that  I 
am  doomed  to  a  long  hfe,  with  all  its  days  full  of 
the  most  cruel  wretchedness  and  the  most  bitter 
sorrow.  Since  the  very  first  hour  when  I 
learned  that  war  was  mevitable,  has  this  convic- 
tion oppressed  me  with  its  ever  darkening 
shadow.  It  was  in  the  howl  of  my  dogs  when  I 
left  home.  It  seemed  to  me  that  the  little  brutes 
felt  it  and  pitied  me.  I  hear  it  murmured  in  the 
sighing  voice  of  the  pine-tree,  and  in  the  notes 
of  the  Uttle  brooklets  as  they  go  singing  along  on 
their  way  to  the  sea.  "When  I  was  convalescing 
in  my  sohtar\'  rambles  in  the  grand  old  woods,  I 
could  hear  it  in  the  lugubrious  reverberations  of 
the  mountain's  echo.  Thus  all  Nature  speaks  to 
me  in  the  same  cheerless,  prophetic  strain.  Con- 
cerning my  getting  killed  or  dying  from  wounds, 
I  never  give  myself  the  least  concern,  so  thor- 
oughly am  I  persuaded  that  I  will  be  reserved 
for  some  other  and  perhaps  sadder  fate. 

"  But  here  are  present  things  demanding  our 
immediate  attention  —  reahties,  not  visionary 
shadows.  Our  hour  has  come.  How  dark  it  has 
grown,  and  how  still !  See  down  there  against 
the  horizon  the  dark  figures  of  our  two  nearest 
guards  asleep  on  post.  Poor  wretches !  Human 
nature,  with  them,  has  been  taxed  beyond  its 
capacities  of  endurance.  Quickly  now — not  a 
word,  father,  but  follow  me,  and  do  everywhere 
just  Avhat  I  tell  you.  There,  now,  we  are  nicely 
outside  of  our  guard  line.  Here  is  a  musket;  I 
will  take  it.  Lie  down  in  that  tail  grass  in  the 
fence  corner,  while  I  stand  guard  here,  and  take 
some  observations." 

Suiting  the  action  to  the  word,  he  soon  meets 
his  desired  opportunity. 

"  Halt !     Who  comes  there  ?" 

A  horseman  approaches  his  post. 

Horseman:  "  Friend,  with  the  countersign." 

Cloud:  "Dismount,  advance  and  give  the 
countersign."     .... 

"  All  right.     Gro  ahead." 


The  horseman  rides  away,  and  Cloud  says : 

"  Now,  father,  we  will  go  along  this  road  for 
the  present." 

Gex.  Cloud  :  "  Where  m  the  world  did  you 
get  the  countersign,  Garland  ?"' 

Cloud:  '"Why,  from  that  courier.  Where 
else  do  you  suppose  I  could  get  it  ?  That  is  why 
I  played  sentinel." 

G-EN.  Cloud:  "Well,  that  rivals  all  the  auda- 
cious coolness  I  have  ever  before  witnessed." 

Cloud:  "That  is  the  way  I  have  captured 
many  an  unsuspecting  fellow.  Under  more  fa- 
vorable circumstances  this  one  would  have  shared 
the  same  fate. 

"But  soft!  There  is  a  house  all  aglow  with 
light,  and  full  of  busthng  life;  and  here,  just 
ahead,  are  several  horses  at  the  fence,  more  than 
fifty  yards  from  the  house.  Look!  There  are 
officers  supping  at  the  table.  These  are  their 
horses  fully  caparisoned,  with  even  their  over- 
coats and  arms  on  the  saddles.  How  fortunate  ! 
Not  a  living  soul  nearer  than  the  house,  and  no 
sentinel  visible  there.  What  superb  animals  and 
equipments — cavalry  officers,  colonels  and  above. 
Choose  quickly  and  mount.  Ah !  you  take  the 
jet  black.  I  wiU  take  this  one ;  it  appears  a  dark 
bay.  How  strongly  the  fights  reflect  out  here. 
It  is  grey  twifight  here ;  but  they  can't  see,  look- 
ing in  this  direction. 

"  Button  up  the  blue  over  the  grey  carefully. 
Now  a  ride  for  hberty.  Slowly  until  we  are  out 
of  hearing  of  that  house.  Now,  faster  and  faster 
like  the  wild  horse  of  Tartary.  ^Yhy,  they  do  not 
appear  to  have  any  camp  guards  out.  I  want 
to  bear  for  our  extreme  left.  I  think  tliis  is 
about  the  direction.  We  seem  to  be  leaving  the 
camps  behind.  Slack  up.  I  hear  a  horseman 
coming  toward  us. 

"  Can  you  tell  us  how  far  it  is  to  the  out-post, 
and  what  command  holds  it  up  this  road  ?  " 

Horseman  :  "  About  two  hundred  yards.  The 
Pennsylvania  reserves  hold  it." 

Cloud  :  "  We  are  right  after  all.  Thank  you. 
G-ood  night." 

"  Now,  father,  the  crisis  is  at  hand.  We  must  be 
cool,  and  ride  slowly.  If  the  sentinel  wishes  to 
detain  us  until  the  officer  of  the  guard  comes, 
mount  quick  as  a  flash  of   lightning,  lean  for- 


THE  FIELD  OF   GETTYSBURG. 


101 


ward  and  to  the  side  from  the  guard,  and  make 
the  horse  fly  past  him.  Here  is  the  main  body- 
sleeping  on  their  arras,  on  both  sides  of  the  road. 
Yonder  is  a  sentinel,  walking  a  beat  in  the 
road. 

Sentinel:   "Halt!     Who  comes  there  ?  " 

Cloud  :   "  Friends,  with  the  countersign." 

Sentinel  :  "  Dismount  one,  advance,  and  give 
the  countersign." 

"All  right.     Come  ahead." 

Cloud:  "  Is  there  a  sentinel  beyond  you  ?  " 

Sentinel  :  "If  there  is, he  is  a  rebel  one.  They 
had  a  vedette  up  on  the  hill  about  two  hundred 
yards  fi'om  here  at  dark.  There  is  no  infantry 
in  front  of  us." 

Cloud:  "  Well,  we  are  glad  to  find  you  on  the 
alert.  We  are  making  a  tour  of  inspection  of 
our  posts,  and  at  the  same  time  reconnoitering  to 
ascertain  whether  or  not  the  enemy  is  falling 
back.  We  will  go  up  the  road  until  we  find  the 
vedette,  and  you  must  not  shoot  us  as  we 
return." 

Sentinel  :  "  It  is  nearly  time  for  my  rehef,  but 
I  will  post  him." 

Cloud  :  "  Come  General,  let  us  surprise  a  rebel 
vedette. 

"  Now,  father,  if  we  can  reach  our  lines  thus 
easily,  we  are  fortunate.  My  greatest  apprehension 
is  that  our  vedettes  have  orders  to  fire  without 
halting;  but  perhaps  not  on  only  one  or  two.  I 
think  we  have  rode  nearly  a  mile  since  leaving 
the  Federal  posts." 

GrEN.  Cloud:  "  It  is  some  distance.  I  believe 
our  troops  are  retreating  under  cover  of  the 
darkness.  Well,  my  boy,  there  seems  to  be  method 
in  your  recklessness,  if  you  conduct  all  your 
operations  as  systematically  as  you  have  con- 
ducted this  one,  and  far  less  danger  than  I  im- 
agined. Ignorance  is  not  a  word  su^ciently 
strong  to  express  my  lack  of  knowledge  in  the 
roles  that  you  play." 

Cloud:  "I  am  thankful  that  you  are  un- 
deceived, father.  It  causes  me  a  thrill  of  gratifi- 
cation to  hear  you  speak  some  words  of  appro- 
bation. But  yonder  is  the  solitary  horseman. 
The  end  is  near  now- " 

Vedette:   "Halt!     Who  comes  there?*' 


Cloud  :  Two  Confederates,  who  have  escaped 
from  the  enemy,  without  the  countersign." 

Vedette:  "Dismount,  and  advance — one." 

Cloud  :  "  How  fortunate  father.  I  will  ad- 
vance. To  Avhose  command,  vedette,  do  you 
belong  ?  " 

Vedette:   "  Gen.  J 's  Virginia  brigade.    To 

what  command  do  you  belong?" 

Cloud  :  "  Gen.  J knows  us  well.    Send  us 

to  him  at  once.  I  am  Cloud,  the  scout  of  1861-2, 
and  that  is  Gen.  Cloud,  of  Jackson's  old  corps." 

Vedette  :  "  Advance,  General.  Yes,  that  is 
Gen.  Cloud.  I  recognize  you  in  the  dark,  Gene- 
ral. I  remember  you  since  Antietam  and  South 
Mountain,  where  I  saw  you  so  often  in  such 
wondrous  peril.  The  officer  of  the  post  is  com- 
ing. Ah !  here  he  is  now.  Lieutenant,  here  are 
Gen.  Cloud  and  his  son,  who  have  just  escaped 
from  the  enemy  and  wish  to  be  conducted  to 
Gen.  J ." 

Lieutenant:  "All  right,  gentlemen:  follow 
me." 

Cloud  :  "  Now,  my  General,  I  am  ready  to 
recognize  your  rank  and  respect  your  authority; 
we  are  in  your  sphere." 

Gen.  Cloud  :  "  I  thank  God  for  it.  I  breathe 
easier  again.  What  Avill  your  friend  Pleasington 
think  of  this  ?  " 

Cloud  :  "  Oh !  Pleasington  will  not  be  in  the 
least  surprised.  He  has  known  of  me  being  in 
other  tight  places  and  then  very  soon  out  of 
them.  He  will  be  glad  of  it,  more  than  sorry; 
only  he  will  feel  disappointed  that  he  failed  to 
reahze  the  pleasure  of  extending  to  us  the  kind- 
ness which  he  anticipated,  and  which  I  am  cer- 
tainly well  assured  he  so  much  desired  to  bestow. 
But  I  see  the  long,  grizzly  beard  of  the  old,  un- 
couth General,  who  is  writing  by  a  wax  taper, 
out  yonder  in  the  gloom.  How  weird  and  un- 
earthly is  his  appearance!  Let  us  enter,  and 
present  ourselves;  all  is  over  and  we  are  safe." 


102 


MYSTIC  KOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

GENERAL     W.    E.    J . 

"  The  brightest  flower  of  her  own  Southland's  bloom, 
Her  shroud  the  sea-foam,  woven  without  a  stain. 
The  coral  ocean  depths  her  silent  tomb. 
And  his  own  lieart's  grave,  for  he  never  smiled 
again." 

— M.  A.  Billings. 

Gen.  J ,  who  was  referred  to  as  Col.  J , 

in  the  chapter  "Beyond  the  Out-posts,"  and 
whom  we  beheld  writing  by  a  dim  waxen  taper, 
in  the  sombre  foliage  of  a  Pennsjdvania  forest,  in 
the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  fatal  "  Field  of 
Gettysburg,"  the  same  night  of  its  most  mourn- 
ful, soul-stirring  scene,  was  a  native  Virginian — a 
true  son  of  the  South-western  blue-grass  yeo- 
manry. 

In  his  tender  years  he  was  elected  to  a  cadet- 
ship  at  West  Point,  where-  he  graduated  with 
high  honors. 

From  the  military  school  he  passed  to  the 
United  States  army  with  a  clear  record,  blem- 
ished by  no  dishonorable  mark.  He  wa'fe  amiable, 
witty,  fascinating:  hence  a  general  favorite  am'ong 
his  comrades  and  in  society,  wherever  duty  led 
him. 

In  the  Mexican  War  he  rendered  meritorious 
service,  and  displayed  conspicuous  gallantry  on 
the  field  of  bfittle^  and  also  rendered  valuable  aid 
in  many  Indian  campaigns  on  the  Plains  and  in 
Texas. 

But  back  amid  the  enchanting  dells  of  his  na- 
tive blue  hills  there  was  a  luring  charm  to  draw 
his  thoughts  and  soul  from  the  stern  duties  of  a 
soldier ;  an  object  capable  of  awakening  emo- 
tions the  most  elevating  and  ennobling  that  ever 
wield  the  sway  over  the  heart  and  control  the 
life  of  man — a  pure  woman !  true  love ! 

Miss  D was  the  fair  object  of  his  gallant 

adoration.  She  was  of  the  fair  flowers  of  that 
far-famed  beauty-producing,  blue-grass  region, 
one  of  the  very  fairest. 

To   this  lovable    young    lady   Captain  J 

offered  a  soldier's  worthy  hand,  and  sued  in  re- 
turn for  hers  of  spotless  beauty.  He  loved  her ; 
she  loved  him — a  beautiful  mutuality.  With 
them  the  course  of  true  love  ever  ran  smoothly. 


She  accepted  his  offer  of  marriage,  and  yielded  to 
him  her  heart,  and  plighted  vows. 

Capt.  J-: then  returned  to  his  post  of  duty 

in  Texas,  where  he  was  stationed  some  years 
after  the  Mexican  War,  with  a  joyous  heart  and 
a  hopeful  future. 

Time   rolled   by   some   seasons.     Capt.  J 

returned  again  to  claim  his  long-time  affianced 
bride. 

After  the  nuptial  ceremonies  were  consummated, 
the  ovations  from  friends  had  subsided,  and  his 

furlough  was  almost  spent,  Capt.  J set  out 

with  his  beautiful  wife  for  his  distant  post,  with 
dream-land,  day-dreamland  anticipations. 

His  journey  was  by  way  of  the  Crescent  City, 
the  beautiful  metropolis  of  the  South,  which  he 
reached  in  safety.  Between  him  and  his  desti- 
nation rolled  the  blue,  the  sweeping,  the 
treacherous  surge  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  above 
its  hidden  treasures  and  its  buried  hopes. 

But  what  were  these  to  Capt.  J and  his 

bride  ?  Little  recked  these  young  and  confiding 
hearts  of  the  terrors  of  the  deep  or  its  wide  waste 
of  waters.  The  ecstacies  of  love  stifled  the  rising 
thought  of  storm  perils  and  dangers  on  the  sea. 
They  had,  this  happy  couple,  just  embarked 
on  the  voyage  of  lifa  What  was  a  little  span  of 
water  in  their  path  ?  What  had  it  been  to  him  ? 
No  barrier  to  stay  his  eager  journeys  to  the  land 
of  his  birtli,~  the  home  of  his  love.  To  them  it 
would  be  but  a  pleasing  sail,  a  delightful  voyage. 

Thus,  little  fearing,  they  embarked  on  a  Gulf 
Outside-line  steamer,  passed  the  mouth  of  the 
noble  "  Father  of  Waters,"  crossed  the  bar,  and 
sped  onward  to  break  "the  blue  crystal  of  the 
seas." 

When  the  voj^age  was  nearl}^  half  accom- 
plished a  white  squalteuddenly  struck  the  staunch 
ship.  A  white  squall  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  is 
the  mariner's  terror.  It  is  something  terrible  to 
contemplate,  appalling  to  experience. 

It  comes  suddenly,  without  a  moment's  warn- 
ing; and  did  it  give  warning,  the  situation  would 
not  thereby  be  rendered  less  fearful.  It  is  the 
raging  tempest's  breath  doubled,  twisted  and 
concentrated. 

The  pent-up  force  of  the  tempest  and  the 
hurricane  bursts  into   a    devastating'  whirlwind 


GENERAL  W.  E.   J. 


103 


that  twists  vast  craters  down  deep  into  the 
bosom  of  the  sea.  When  this  strikes  a  vessel, 
she  is  doomed. 

Thus  was  the  ship  which  carried  Capt.  J 

and  his  bride,  with  their  hopes  suddenly  found- 
ered, and  forced  to  be  abandoned  Avith  demor- 
alizing precipitation. 

All  the  lady  passengers  were  placed  in  the 
lai'gestand  the  staunchestboat;  and  among  these, 
was  Capt.  J 's  bride. 

This  boat  capsized,  and  every  soul  on  board  sank 
to  rise  no  more. 

The  men  were  saved  in  the  other  boats. 

What  a  lamentable  voyage,  and  Avhat  a  bridal 

tour  for  Capt.  J !  What  a  sorrow  had  replaced 

the  joyous  hope  in  his  heart,  to  be  borne  in  sad- 
ness, back  to  his  cheerless  duties ! 

From  that  day  Capt.  J was  a  sadly  changed 

man.  His  life  became  soured  and  embittered; 
he  was  ever  after  morose  and  taciturn,  caring 
neither  for  himself  nor  for  the  world. 

In  course  of  time  he  abandoned  the  armj^  and 
returned  to  his  agricultural  estate,  where  he 
lived  in  quiet  seclusion,  a  silent  mourner. 

Thus  he  remained  with  his  sleepless  sorrow 
and  his  broken  heart  hid  away  from  the  eyes 
of  the  heedless,  unsympathetic  world,  until  the 
tumult  and  the  commotion  of  the  gathering  civil 
storm  of  1861  aroused  him  from  his  lethargic 
slumbers. 

His  first  love,  the  lifeless  and  voiceless  idol  of 
his  young  life,  once  the  inspiration  of  his 
soul,  carried  his  vitalizing  characteristics  down 
with  her  into  the  bosom  of  the  deep;  and  left 
his  nature  inert,  indifferent,  cold  and  inanimate, 
with  seemingly  nothing  on  earth  able  to  revivify 
him  into  activity. 

But  he  had  another  cherished  idol,  a  natal 
love,  a  love  that  he  had  never  been  called  upon 
while  in  the  peaceful  remoteness  of  civil  life,  to 
be  jealous  of  its  sanctity;  something  none  had 
attempted  to  violate.     This  was  Old  Virginia. 

Her  call  reanimated  him  once  more.  He 
quickly  responded,  and  espoused  her  cause ;  took 
to  himself  another  bride. 

He  hastened  to  the  field  of  strife  with  a  com- 
pany of  cavalry,  the  first  from  his  section  of  the 
State. 


In  the  old  army,  Capt.  J outranked  J.  E.  B. 

Stewart.  For  some  personal  reasons  of  a  strictly 
private  nature,  the  most  vindictive  animosity 
existed  between  these  men,  dating  back  to  the 
days  of  their  associated  service  in  the  old  army. 
This  hostility  time  did  not  abite. 

With  this  hatred  still  rankling  in  their  hearts. 
Fate  decreed  that  they  should  be  associated 
directly  together  in  the  service  of  the  ill-starred 
cause  of  the  Confederacy.     Stewart  started  as  a 

Colonel ;   J ,  as  captain  under  him  and  in  the 

same  regiment.  Throughout  their  careers  their 
grades  of  rank  remained  in  about  the  same 
proportion  as  they  ascended  in  the  scale  of 
promotions. 

To-night  we    find  this  veritable  night-hawk, 

G-en.  J ,  with  his  brigade  in  position,  to  hover 

as  a  protecting  cloud  on  the  rear  flank  of  his 
crippled  and  dispirited  countrymen,  as  their 
vanquished  hosts  sullenly  and  slowly  drag 
their  shattered  columns  on  their  long,  painful, 
sad  retreat  through  a  hostile  land,  in  the  face  of 
the  victorious  legions  of  the  enemy,  who  were 
expected  to  be  relentless  pursuers. 

Note  his  greeting  to  the  unexpected  arrival  of 
his  friends. 

Gen.   J :    "Well!     Are  there  not  enough 

dead  men  in  this  ghastly  region  to  satiate  the 
Infernal,  without  sending  out  ghosts  into  the 
dread  shades  of  this  doomsday  night,  to  frighten 
to  death  those  who  escaped  the  thrusts  of 
the  pale  horseman's  blade  ?  Why,  Gen.  Cloud, 
I  heard  to-night  that  you  were  killed,  and  I 
thought  Garland's  bones  were  purifying  for  the 
resurrection  morn  on  the  plains  of  Manassas." 

-  G-EN.  Cloud  :  "It  was  only  my  horse  that  was 
killed.  He  fell  on  my  leg,  and  I  was  captured 
before  I  could  extricate  myself.  I  siij^pose  my 
comrades  think  that  I  was  killed.  Garland  was 
knocked  senseless  on  Cemetery  Hill,  and  cap- 
tured. When  I  was  turned  into  the  herd  of 
prisoners,  he  was  almost  the  first  man  I  met. 
This  work  is  all  his.  I  was,  I  am  now  truly 
ashamed_^to  admit,  opposed  to  it,  until  I  found 
my  suasive  powers  and  rebukes  were  alike 
unavailing. 

Gen.  J :   ''Had  I  known  you  was  a  prisoner 

General,  and  Garland  with  you,  I  would  have 


104 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


bet  my  horse  that  you  -were  both  in  our  hnes 
before  daybreak  in  the  morning.  It  is  charging 
those  infernal,  fiery  mouthed  batteries  that  beats 
the  boy,  where  he  cannot  employ  his  light- 
fingered  strategy  and  startling  little  ruses.  I 
am  glad  you  are  both  safe  and  with  me  for 
to-morrow,  when  I  expect  to  see  some  tight 
work.  General,  you  can  do  the  praying,  I  can 
do  the  swearing,  and  Garland  the  scouting  for 
the  brigade  to-morrow.  May  be  we  can  get 
through." 

Cloud:  "It  is  a  pity  you  swear  so,  General. 
But  for  that,  you  and  father  would  make  the 
best  match  harness-team  in  our  army." 

Gen.  J :  "Yes,  Garl;  and  by if  the  old 

General  had  his  old  brigade  here  with  me,  like  it 
was  at  South  Mountain  and  Antietam,  we  would 

make  a  team  the  Tanks  would  get sick  of 

driving  before  to-morrow  night." 

"Those  maiden  battles  of  ours,  as  brigade 
commanders.  General,  were  the  ones  where  we 
rendered  our  most  brilliant  services." 

Gen.  Cloud  :  "  Ah !  But  then  our  star  shone 
brighter  than  noAV." 

Gen.  J :  "  Than   now  ?     I  am  unable   to 

find  it  anywhere  in  the  canopy  of  cerulean  blue 
to-night.  It  went  out,  my  dear  friend,  to-dary, 
when  Pickett's  division  failed  on  that  now  blood- 
christened  Hill,  and  left  us  and  our  cause  in  the 
midnight  darkness  of  despair." 

"From  this  day  forward  I  shall  shut  my  eyes  to 
the  consequences  that  are  surely  coming  on,  and 
fight  everywhere  and  under  all  circumstances 
with  the  reckless  indifference  as  to  myself  that 
a  pirate  under  the  black  flag  displays  when  he 
finds  himself  at  last  face  to  face  with  the  inev- 
itable, and  stands  at  bay,  selling  his  life  at  a 
price  worthy  a  far  better  cause. ' 

"  Early  in  life  the  cruel  waves  of  an  angry 
sea  robbed  me  of  happiness  and  hope  forever. 
In  ray  declining  years,  so  long  embittered  with 
a  cureless  sorrow,  I  espoused  this  young  but,  as 
I  find  too  late,  fickle  creature,  '  The  Southern 
Confederacy,'  which  I  have  this  day  beheld 
liopelessly  engulfed  in  the  blood  of  her  truest 
and  bravest  defenders.  Oh,  my  friends,  I  feel  to- 
night some  acute  pangs  of  that  relentless  anguish 
of  '  the  long  ago!'  But  let  us  try  to  sleep  a  little." 


Cloud  :  "  Yes,  General ;  for  to-morrow  I  start 
on  a  career,  be  it  long  or  short,  with  the  one  ever 
changeless  watch-word,  'Remember  Gettysburg.'  " 

Gen.  Cloud:  "That  is  a  memento  that  will 
haunt  us  all  to  the  grave." 

Gen.  J :  "  Now   Lieutenant,  watch   them 

closely,  observe  your  instructions  to  the  letter, 
and  post  me  promptly  whenever  there  is  occa- 
sion for  it." 

Cloud  :  "  Can  I  accompany  him.  General,  en- 
tirely independent." 

Gen.  J :  "  Yes,  Lieutenant,  he  acts  as  he 

Ukes  with  you  or  not." 

Gen.  Cloud  :  "  I  think  I  Avill  serve  under  you 
to-day,  boy." 

Cloud  :  "No,  father;  this  is  no  proper  service 
for  a  general." 

Gen.  J :   "  He  is  right;  stay  with  me  Gen. 

Cloud." 

The  Lieutenant  and  Garland  Cloud  ride  away; 
and  the  two  old  generals  lay  down  on  their 
blankets  and  sleep  until  morning,  when  they 
awake  and  continue  their  conversation. 

Gen.  Cloud  :  Did  you  sleep  General  ?  I  did 
quite  soundly." 

Gen.  J :  "  Oh,  j^es  ;  I  was  completely  ex- 
hausted. I  wish  that  boy  of  yours  was  trained 
in  the  cavalry  manual." 

Gen.  Cloud  :  "  He  tells  me  he  has  memorized 
every  word  of  both  it  and  the  arm}^  regulations. 
I  know  him  to  be  an  expert  rider." 

Gen.  J :   "I  am  pleased  to  learn  this.     He 

is  a  good  scout,  a  fine  judge  of  human  nature, 
and  thoroughly  understands  the  great  advan- 
tages afforded  against  men  in  a  moment  of 
temporary  excitement  or  confusion  by  the  loss  of 
their  presence  of  mind. 

"How  feeble  is  the  vigor  of  the  pursuit  to 
what  I  expected;  the  enemy  must  be  badly 
crippled.  It  is  nearly  night.  Yonder  comes  the 
Lieutenant.  It  has  not  been  long  since  the  relief 
started  to  him." 

Gen.  Cloud:  "I  do  not  see  anything  of  Gar- 
land in  the  party." 

Gen.  J :   "  Oh,  we  may  not  see   him  for  a 

week  to  come." 

"  Well,  Lieutenant,  I  perceive  you  have  cap- 
tured some  prisoners  and  horses." 


GENERAL  W.   E.   J. 


105 


Lieutenant  :  "  Yes,  General,  but  this  is  partly 
your  young  infantryman's  work.  He  can  shame 
the  best  of  us  on  horseback. 

"  He  got  among  detached  parties  of  a  Dutch 
squadron,  and  actually  destroyed  them.  They 
could  not  ride,  nor  shoot,  nor  use  the  sabre ; 
and  their  clumsy  horses  could  not  run.  The 
horse  he  rides  is  well  trained,  and  goes  like  a 
flash.  He  wounded  some,  or  else  they  were 
disabled  in  falling  off  their  horses.  He  soon  had 
the  horse  loaded  with  the  ammunition  of  sixteen- 
shooters,  and  has  fired  about  five  hundred  times 
to-day.  He  did  not  mind  tackling  a  half  dozen 
Dutchmen  at  a  time.  But  this  afternoon  the 
Dutch  were  relieved.  He  soon  began  to  be 
cautious,  and  did  not  attempt  to  provoke  their 
fire,  nor  to  run  on  to  a  half  dozen  detached  in  a 
party;  he  sent  me  word  that  they  were  the 
best  regulars  in  the  Federal  army,  then  next  to 
us." 

Gen.  J :   "  That  will  do,  Lieutenant.    Feed 

your  men  on  horses. 

"  This  dispatch.  Gen.  Cloud,  is  a  peremptory 
order  from  Gen.  Stewart  to  burn  this  wagon 
train, which  is  worth  more  to  the  army  than  my 
commission.  If  I  do  not  obey  the  order,  he 
will  court-martial  me.  If  I  obey  it,  and  he 
learns  that  I  might  have  saved  the  train,  he  will 
then  reprimand  me  for  not  exercising  dis- 
cretionary judgment.  What  would  you  do 
under  similar  circumstances  ?" 

Gen.  Cloud :  "I  would  obey  the  order  when 
satisfied  that  it  was  impossible  to  save  this  valu- 
able property,  which  is  not,  from  every  present 
indication,  yet  the  situation." 

Gen.  J :  "  Yes,  and me  if  I  don't  take 

that  course." 

Gen.  Cloud  :  "  Well,  General,  I  shall  take  this 
opportunity  to  rejoin  my  command,  as  I  may 
not  soon  have  another.  So  I  bid  you  adieu  for 
the  present." 

Gen.    J :    "  Good    fortune    to   you,   Gen. 

Cloud.     Farewell." 

Some  time  after  the  Confederate  army  had 
crossed  the  Potomac  and  encamped  in  Virginia, 
Garland  Cloud  reported  to  Gen.  J . 

Cloud  :   "  Well,  Gen.  J ,  had  you  booked 

nit'  as  lost  this  time  ?" 


Gen.  J :   "  No,  Garl,  I  shall  never  do  that 

until  the  sod  is  growing  green  over  your  grave. 
The  old  General  is  uneasy  about  you,  as  you 
were  not  accounted  for  when  the  last  of  our 
rear  guard  crossed  the  river ;  but  I  sent  him 
word  that  you  would  turn  up  yet  all  right. 
You  must  have  a  large  credit  now  on  your 
Gettysburg  account.  I  see  the  fine  horse  has  a 
flesh  wound  on  the  rump." 

Cloud  :  "  Yes,  General,  father  seems  to  re- 
gard this  service  as  being  more  dangerous  than 
charging  batteries,  but  I  do  not  thus  consider  it. 
I  have  caused  them  all  the  annoyance  that  I 
could.  The  horse,  brave,  fine  fellow,  got  that 
scratch  from  long  range.  ' 

Gen.  J :  "  Now  Garl,  I  wish  you  would 

take  charge  of  that  squadron,  and  put  it  through 
every  evolution  of  the  drill  and  sabre  exercise. 

H:  *  H:  *  *  :*:  l(c 

"  That  will  do.     You  understand  that  as  well 
as  some  of  my  oldest  and  most  efficient  officers. 
Let  me  see  some  of  those  grand  feats  of  horse- 
manship the  boys  have  been  telling  me  about. 
******* 

"  Well,  Garl,  there  are  few  men  in  any  service 
can  outride  you." 

Cloud  :  "  Now,  General,  I  will  turn  the  horse 
and  trappings  over  to  you,  and  go  and  see  the 
wreck  of  my  command  !" 

Gen.  J :  "  Ah  !  wreck  it  is,  too.  I  un- 
derstand that  on  the  retreat.  Gen.  Lee,  when 
passing  a  small  body  of  troops,  asked  Gen.  Long- 
street  whose  battalion  that  was ;  and  that  he 
shed  tears  when  answered,  '  That,  General,  is 
Pickett's  division.'  I  will  keep  the  horse  for  you 
until  you  are  sent  on  the  scout  again." 

Cloud:  "That  will  be  most  kind.  Good-by. 
General." 

Gen.  J :  "  Good-b)%  Garland.    Our  Avatch- 

words  are  the  same.  Some  time  in  the  gloomy 
midnight  or  on  the  field  of  battle  we  will  meet 
again." 


1U6 


.IVIYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


CHAPTER  XXYI. 

THE   TRANSFER,  AND   PART    OF   ITS   SEQUEL. 

"  Who  loves  raves— 'tis  youth's  frenzy— but  the  cure 

Is  bitterer  still ;  as  charm  by  charm  unwinds 
Which  robed  our  idols,  and  we  see  too  sure 

Nor  worth,  nor  beauty  dwells,  from  out  the  mind's 
Ideal  shape  of  such ;  yet  still  it  binds 

That  fatal  spell,  and  still  it  draws  us  on, 
Keapiug  the  whirlwind  from  the  oft  sown  winds; 

The  stubborn  heart,  its  alchemy  begun, 
Seems   ever   near    the    prize— wealthiest   when    most 
undone."  — Bykon. 

Cloud:  "Capt.  Harman,  I  have  just  been  re- 
lieved from  my  guard-jsost,  and  ordered  to  report 
to  you.     What  does  this  mean?  " 

Capt.  Harman:  "How  are  you,  Capt.  Cloud? 
Let  me  congratulate  you." 

Cloud  :  "  Captain,  don't  make  sport  of  a  poor 
ragged  soldier." 

Capt.  H :   "There   is  no    sport.      Here   is 

your   commission  in  the  cavahy  of  the  regular 

army,  and  an  order  to  report  at  once  to  Gen.  J . 

AVe  are  sorry  to  lose  you ;  but  I  have  long  been 
expecting  this,  and  have  been  surprised  at  its 
delay." 

Cloud:  "Well,  it  is  a  surprise  to  me  of  which 
I  did  not  even  dream." 

Soon  after  he  is  greeted  by  his  general. 

G-EN.  J :  "Well,    Capt.  Cloud,  I  am  pleased 

to  find  you  prompt.  I  want  you  to  take  the 
Gettj'sburg  horse  and  accoutrements,  and  proceed 

witliout  delay  to  S ,  in  the  South-west,  where 

you  will  find  a  squadron  of  rich  men's  sons —  a 
regular  mob.  Take  charge  of  them,  and  drill 
them  thoroughly,  at  the  same  time  leaving  no 
clause  of  the  most  rigid  discipline  unenforced. 
They  will  hate  you,  but  never  mind  that. 

"  I  expected  to  accompany  you,  but  I  am  forced 
to  remain  here  now  to  answer  a  charge  for  not 
burning  a  wagon  train,  instead  of  bringing  it  out 
of  Pennsylvania.  I  may  be  able  to  join  you 
within  two  months.  I  want  you  to  commence 
with  that  squadron  what  I  mean  to  enforce  in 
every  company  in  that  department.  Make  a 
model  squadron.  The  material  is  the  very  best 
in  the  world." 

Capt.  Cloud:  "I  shall  comply  with  your 
wishes,  General,  to  the  very  best  of  my  ability." 


Gen.  J :   ■'  I  am  satisfied  that  you  will  not 

disappoint  my  expectations.  You  are  a  young 
man  of  the  mountains,  and  are  destined  to  see 
desperate  service  in  them,  for  which  the  credit 
will  be  small ;  but  it  is  a  service  of  the  most  grave 
importance  to  the  Soutli. 

"In  loving  the  cause  Avhich  we  serve,  you  are 
I  think,  Capt.  Cloud,  the  only  young  man  I  know 
who  loves  her  Avith  the  blind  desperate  de- 
votion similar  to  mine;  that  would  treasure  her 
memory,  long  years  after  she  is  dead,  with  the 
same  constant  fidelity  as  when  she  was  young, 
beautiful  and  strong,  promising  to  stand  proudly 
forth  among  the  nations  of  the  earth  crowned 
with  a  diadem  of  unsurpassable  glory.  But  now, 
my  dear  boy,  she  is  maimed,  sick  and  emaciated ; 
yet  still  she  is  that  same  late  beautiful  and  lovable 
form.  Let  us  stand  by  and  defend  her  lowly 
couch  of  death;  and  force  from  her  ruthless  de- 
spoilers  their  reluctant  consent  to  her  decent 
burial  and  funeral  obsequies  worthy  the  lofty 
nobility  of  her  tender  years. 

"  Think  of  her  poverty-stricken  orphans.  It  is 
for  them  that  we  fight,  from  this  day  forward, 
to  secure  for  them  a  peace  under  the  old  flag 
that  will  enable  them  to  scrape  up  the  fragments 
from  among  the  debris  of  ruins,  and  with  these 
lay  a  foundation  upon  which  their  posterity,  as 
they  are  able  to  procure  materials,  may  build  a 
new  structure,  that  will,  in  time,  render  their  exist- 
ence tolerable. 

"I  am  regarded  as  being  heartless  and  unfeeling. 
It  is  false.  I  am  miserable.  My  pangs  of  cruel,  un- 
abating  agony  have  made  me  reckless  and  rendered 
me  indifferent  to  myself — and  myself  only.  The 
world  cannot  look  down  into  my  heart  and  read 
the  secret  emotions  there  concealed.  Because  I  am 
rough  outside,  because  I  enforce  discipline  with 
unfeeling  severity,  and  because  I  am  wicked,  I 
am  deemed  a  hater  of  the  human  race.  I  admit 
that  I  hate  corruption,  and  the  political  abomi- 
nations that  have  deluged  the  country  with 
blood ;  but  the  true,  the  pure,  and  the  good  I 
reverence  and  adore. 

"  Your  father  detailed  to  me  your  sentiments 
expressed  to  him,  the  night  you  came  to  me  near 
Gettysburg.  This  is  why  I  am  talking  to  you 
with  so  much  freedom.       Although   you  are   so 


THE  TRANSFER,  AND  PART   OF  ITS  SEQUEL. 


107 


young,  there  is  harmony  between  our  spirits.  I 
want  you  to  know  me,  since  we  are  to  work 
together,  perhaps  die  together, — not  that  either. 
Cloud,  for  you  will  be  there  when  I  am  no  more. 

"I  love  the  poor  toil-worn  agriculturist,  and 
deplore  the  ruin  that  has  overwhelmed  and  will 
yet  overwhelm  him.  When  this  war  is  over,  the 
South  cannot  be  represented  by  anything  in  this 
world,  so  truly  well  as  by  Byron's  picture  of 
modern  Greece.  What  a  spectacle !  The  black 
curse  of  demoralization  will  run  riot  over  the 
laud.  The  rich  will  be  poor  and  helpless;  the 
poor  will  be  discontented  and  desperate. 

"We  need  not  regret  the  war  nor  its  results: 
it  was  an  inevitable  destiny.  Come  it  must  at 
some  time.  Better  now,  before  the  country  grew 
more  prosperous  and  powerful.  We  poor  worms 
had  better  bear  its  wasting  storms  of  desolating 
destruction,  than  for  them  to  he  reserved  for 
generations  unborn. 

"  What  will  it  matter  to  us  a  hundred  years 
hence?  Long  before  that  period  of  time  will 
have  elapsed,  the  country  will  be  recovered  from 
the  material  effects  of  the  war,  but  of  the  moral 
efifect — never.  The  high  standard  of  morality 
and  honor  and  integrity  for  which  this  country 
was  once  so  characteristically  famous,  will  go 
glimmering  with  the  things  that  were,  and  be  re- 
placed by  deceit,  treachery,  fraud,  and  every 
imaginary  kind  of  intriguing  chicanery.  These 
will  be  practiced  by  persons  of  both  sexes  once 
possessed  of  irreproachable  reputations.  They 
will  resort  to  these  degrading  devices  of  low  cun- 
ning in  order  to  gain  existence,  sustain  precarious 
social  positions,  or  support  fast  and  intemperate 
living — habits  contracted  in  the  flush  times  of  the 
fickle  bubbles  of  war — by  their  wits,  rather  than 
take  their  true  and  proper  stations  in  hfe,  and 
support  themselves  by  respectable  and  honest 
labor. 

"  All  these  things  are  the  legitimate  offsprings 
of  war,  and  are  felt,  to  some  extent,  by  every  na- 
tion connected  with  it  directly,  although  the  soil 
upon  which  the  actual  conflict  is  waged  may  be 
in  a  remote  region  of  the  globe.  History  teaches 
this.  With  the  army  of  occupation,  in  Mexico, 
I  witnessed  it. 

"  Never  has  any  country  on  the  earth  suffered 


from  this  blighting  curse  worse  than  this  country 
must  sufifer  after  this  war  is  over,  because  there 
are  so  many  people  to  be  affected  by  it ;  and  then 
there  is  no  hamlet  so  remote,  no  hovel  so  humble 
as  entirely  to  ©scape  this  thrice  damnable  influ- 
ence, neither  North  nor  South. 

"  Garland,  remain  firm,  I  entreat  you,  in  your 
faith  and  resolutions  to  be  the  devoted  friend  of 
the  tillers  of  the  soil ;  for  upon  them  rests  the 
country's  only  hope. 

"  Eemember  my  words.  Think  of  them,  and 
compare  with  them  the  signs  of  tlie  times,  as  you 
may  some  day,  away  yonder  on  the  other  side 
of  this  bloody  curtain  of  smoke  and  flame,  see  and 
experience  them.  Then  you  will,  I  hope,  bestow 
a  thought  of  kindness  on  the  spot,  wherever  it 
may  be,  that  is  the  lonely,  friendless  grave  of 
your  friend,  poor,  uncouth,  eccentric  old  Bill 
J ." 

Capt.  C :   "Oh,  alas!  my  poor  General!" 

Gen.  J :    "Ah,   Garland!  I  see  you  pity 

me,  and  deplore  the  cause  for  which  I  am  suffer- 
ing so  bitterly — the  sad  and  cruel  fate  in  store 
for  my  poor  country.  This  from  your  young, 
tender  and  yet  pure  and  innocent  heart,  is  a  real 
comfort  to  me.  I  am  little  pitied  and  less  loved 
in  this  cold  world,  but  it  may  be  my  own  fault. 
But  how  could  I  help  it  ?  My  heart  was  buried 
beneath  the  wild  waves  of  the  Gulf  of  Mexico, 
with  my  lost  Kose.  I  was  unable  to  dissemble, 
and  act  a  part  I  could  not  feel ;  and  hence  I  be- 
came estranged  from  society  and  the  world,  and 
have  thus,  I  suppose,  forfeited  all  claim  to  the 
consideration  and  sympathy  of  mankind. 

"  This  is  enough.  Your  tears  to  me  are  more 
preciously  eloquent  than  all  the  words  your 
tongue  could  speak.  Until  we  meet  again  in  the 
South-west,  farewell." 

Capt.  C :  "  Farewell,  my  General  and  my 

friend.  While  I  live,  I  shall  remember  your  sad 
words." 

Gen.  J :  "  God  bless  you,  Capt.  Cloud,  my 

dear  young  friend." 

Now  Ave  find  Garland  Cloud  on  the  parade- 
ground,  in  front  of  his  squadron,  addres.?ing  the 
soldiers. 

Capt.  Cloud  :  "  Officers,  soldiers,  young  gen- 
tlemen :  I  have  been  ordered  here  by  the  Con- 


108 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


federate  Government  to  take  command  of  you, 
drill,  discipline,  and  prepare  you  for  active  ser- 
vice; and  to  do  this  rapidly  and  thoroughly. 
This  means  unpleasantness  for  you,  but  I  have  no 
discretion. 

"  I  am  pained  to  find  you  utter  strangers  to  the 
simplest  rudiments  of  what  you  must  begin  to 
experience  this  day. 

"  From  the  order  which  will  be  promulgated, 
there  will  be  no  deviation  on  my  part,  under  any 
state  of  circumstances ;  but  in  every  instance  will 
its  provisions  be  enforced,  and  the  penalties  for 
their  infraction  promptly  inflicted." 

The  scene  changes  to  Cloud's  head-quarters. 

First  Citizen  :  "  Capt.  Cloud,  my  friend  and  I 
are  fathers  of  two  of  the  young  officers  under 
3'our  command,  on  a  visit  to  them.  The  com- 
jDlaints  are  loud  against  your  severity,  so  much 
so  that  we  have  been  induced  to  bear  to  you  a 
remonstrance  signed  by  every  member  of  your 
command." 

Capt.  Cloud :  "To  me  remonstrances  are  in 
vain.  I  am  simply  obeying  orders — a  duty  which 
good  soldiers  perform  blindly — simply  what  these 
young  men  have  sworn  to  obey." 

Second  Citizen  :  "  Then  you  will  not  modify 
your  stringency?" 

Capt.  C :  "  By  no  means  and  in  no  wise, 

gentlemen." 

First  Citizen  :  "  Well,  Captain,  this  is  discour- 
aging for  the  boys." 

Cloud  is  again  before  his  squadron. 

Capt.  C :  "  Officers  and  soldiers :  your  mu- 
tinous remonstrance  has  been  read  with  surprise. 
It  is  the  authority  and  dignity  of  the  Government, 
and  not  mine,  that  you  assail.  From  this  mo- 
ment, every  one,  without  exception,  connected 
with  similar  insubordination,  Avill  be  transferred 
to  Gen.  Lee's  infantry. 

"Kid-glove,  band-box  soldiers  are  handsome 
to  look  at  on  reviews  and  grand  parades,  where 
there  are  lady  spectators;  but  they  are  soon 
spoiled  in  the  dust,  mud  and  hard  knocks  of 
an  active  campaign. 

"It  is  a  concession  from  the  Government 
that  you  are  not  in  the  infantry.  Your  horses 
are  mustered  into  the  service,  and  just  as  much 
under  the  control  of  the  Government  as  you  are 


yourselves.  It  is  my  duty  to  see  that  they  are 
properly  treated. 

"  You  are  gentlemen.  A  true  soldier  must  be 
a  gentleman.  Once  separate  the  duty  of  a  sol- 
dier toward  his  immediate  commander  from  your 
ideas  of  the  school-boy's  resentment,  and  your 
chief  trouble  will  be  over.  I  am  held  as  strictly 
accountable  to  my  superiors  as  you  are  to  me. 
The  day  will  come,  and  before  long,  when  you 
will  recognize  your  present  folly." 

The  scene  changes  to  the  parlor  of  the  home 
of  one  of  Cloud's  officers. 

First  Young  Lady  :  "  Capt.  S ,  how  hand- 
somely your  squadron  marched  through  town 
this  evening.  How  was  it  that  not  one  left 
his  place,  or  scarcely  turned  his  head  to  greet  his 
friends,  while  all  the  other  companies  were  nearly 
broken  up  and  scattered  over  town?" 

Capt.  S :   "  That  tyrant,  Capt.  Cloud,  would 

not  allow  it;  nor  could  one  of  us  leave  camp  to 
come  in  to-night,  Avithout  his  permission;  and 
we  must  be  in'our  places  by  sunrise." 

Second  Young  Lady  :  "  He  doesn'tseem  unkind. 
I  think  when  his  sun-bronzed  face  was  flushed, 
as  his  tall  form  appeared — when  he  rode  forward 
on  that  handsome  deep  bay  horse,  in  response  to 
the  request  of  the  Colonel  that  he  thank  the 
ladies,  in  the  name .  of  the  regiment,  for  the  flag 
which  they  presented — that  he  was  the  picture  of 
good-nature  and  kindness;  but  at  other  times  he 
appeared  very  sad." 

Lieut.  M :  "I  should  think  he  would  be 

sad,  since  he  has  not  one  friend  in  the  squadron 
and  never  speaks  to  any  one;  nor  is  he  ever 
spoken  to  except  when  the  stern  compulsions  of 
duty  render  it  unavoidable." 

Miss  M :    "Why,  brother  Joe,  you  ought 

to  be  ashamed.     Where  did  he  go  to-night  ?  " 

Lieut.  M :  "He  stayed   in  camp,  and  let 

all  the  other  officers  come  to  town ;  and  all  the 
men,  too,  he  granted  a  leave  of  absence,  fifty  at  a 
time,  for  two  hours — but  I  pity  those  who  fail 
to  return  within  the  specified.time,  or  get  drunk. 
I  guess  he  knew  nobody  would  invite  him;  and 
had  he  been  so  much  favored  as  to  receive  an 
invitation,  I  am  certain  that  he  would  have  de- 
clined. .  He  commands  the  regiment  to-night." 

Miss    M — -:  "Brother  Joe,    could  you  have 


THE  TRANSFER,  AND   PART   OF  ITS   SEQUEL. 


109 


heard  the  comphments  lavisheil  upon  you  all, 
and  upon  his  laconic,  yet  beautifully  appropriate 
little  acknowledgment  speech,  and  the  ludicrous 
remarks  made  about  the  disgraceful  comparison 
which  the  other  companies  made  with  your  two, 
you  would  feel  flattered.  To  whom  is  all  this 
due?  How  did  the  men  get  their  handsome 
new  uniforms,  cavalry  saddles,  sabres,  revolvers, 
carbines,  etc.?  Why  are  the  accoutrements  so 
bright  and  the  horses  so  sleek?  Why  can  the 
men  ride  so  well  and  march  so  finely?  Then, 
finally,  why  do  the  other  companies  lack  all  these 
things?  Answer  these  questions  creditabh^,  so 
that  the  answers  will  support  your  position  taken 
against  your  commander." 

Lieut.  M :  "I  am  forced  to  admit,  sissie, 

that  this  is  all  his  work,  and  necessary,  were  we 
ever  going  to  the  front.  But  the  Colonel  told 
us  again  this  evening,  that  the  speech  of  this 
Captain,  in  which  he  intimated  that  the  time 
when  we  would  need  discipline  was  near,  was 
mere  bombast;  that  we  were  organized  to  guard 
the  pubUc  works  in  this  section,  and  that  we 
will  do  this  until  the  war  is  over." 

Miss  M :  "Hum!     What  does  Col.  S 

know  about  war?  But  I  hear  cousin  Carrie 
coming  down  stairs.  I  wish  she  could  have 
aiTived  in  time  to  witness  all  this  controverted 
military  display  to-day.  She  will  take  my 
side." 

Servant  Girl:  "Here  is  a  note  for  Capt. 
S ." 

Lieut.  M :  "Wliat  is  it,  S ?     Tou  are 

pale  as  a  ghost." 

Capt.  S :  "  Read  for  yourself,  Lieutenant." 

MissM :  "Why  brother, you  are  as  pale  as 

Capt.  S ." 

Lieut.  M :  "Eead  it,  sissie,  for  the  informa- 
tion of  all." 

Miss  M [Reading]  : 

"  '  Head-quarters,  Cavalry  Camp, 
"'Sept.  8,  1863. 

"  'Capt. S will  inform  all  the  officers  of  the 

first  squadron  who  are  in  town  that  we  march  at 
five  a.  m.  to-morrow,  sharp,  with  light  baggage. 
The  remaining  companies  of  the  regiment  will 


they 


in  a  condition  to  take 


follow  as  soon 
the  field. 

'"Our  destination  is  lower  East  Tennessee, 
to  meet  Burnside.  I  state  this  fact,  in  order 
to  give  you  Avarning  to  take  appropriate  leave  of 
your  friends,  because  it  will  be  many  a  weary 
day  before  you  see  them  again. 

'' '  Respectfully, 

"  '  Garland  Cloud, 

'"Capt.  C.  S.A.' 

"There  now,  you  see  the  kind  of  home-guards 
you  are. 

"Cousin  Carrie,  I  wanted  you  to  help  me  in 
defending  this  poor  captain,  whom  they  hate  on 
account  of  his  rigid  discipline,  because  they  said 
they  would  never  need  it. 

"But  why,  coz,  you  are  as  pale  as  anybody 
else." 

Miss  Carrie  Harman^  "*Let  me  see  that 
note,  please,  coz.  Why,  that,  is  my  best  friend, 
who  saved  dear  Edgar's  life.  -Was  Edgar  here, 
he  would  challenge  you  all  to  mortal  combat. 
This  young  gentleman  is  one  of  the  bravest  of 
the  brave,  with  a  heart  as  tender  as  a  school- 
girl's ;  and  his  father  is  a  general  who  has  dis- 
tinguished himself  on  all  the  bloodiest  fields, 
everywhere  that  Jackson's  old  corps  has  fought." 

Capt.   S :  "Well,   Lieutenant,  since  he   is 

Miss  Carrie's  friend,  and  has  all  the  ladies  here 
enlisted  in  his  defense,  we  will  have  to  apolo- 
gize and  seek  his  friendship. — This  business 
breaks  up  our  ball  arrangements  rather  sadly." 

Lieut.  M :  "Yes,  we  retract;    for  who  dare 

offend  'The  Angel  of  Consolation.'" 

Now  the  scene  is  a  running  battle  ground. 

Gen.  J :   "Captain,  who   commands  these 

men  here?" 

Capt.  S :  "  I  do,  sir,  this  company." 

Gen.   J :    "Who    are   those   ahead    here, 

where  that  heavy  firing  is?" 

Capt.   S :  "Look   here,   stranger,  what   of 

your  business  is  this  ?  I  have  my  orders  to  take 
up  a  position  on  the  next  hill  yonder,  and  have 
not  time  to  waste  answering  questions.  You 
had  better  get  out  of  here  about  as  fast  as  you 
can." 

Gen.   J :  "I   am  Brig.-Gen.    J ,    com- 


110 


IVfYSTIC  KOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


manding  this  department,  and  have  just  arrived 
on  this  field  to  find  our  forces,  as  far  as  I  can 
see,  in  panicky  disorder  and  flight.  I  am  unable 
to  learn  anything." 

Capt.    S :    "Beg   pardon,   G-eneral.      You 

are  a  stranger  to  me.  Capt.  Cloud  is  up  there, 
with  the  other  company  of  his  squadron,  and 
some  two  or  three  hundred  stragglers  from  other 
commands  rallied  by  him  and  his  officers.  He 
says  that  unless  we  hold  the  enemy  in  check,  in 
this  rough  country,  until  dark,  our  little  army 
will  be  destroyed." 

Gen.    J :     "Thank    you.    Captain.      Obey 

your  orders  now." 

The  General  rode  forward  and  joined  Cloud. 

Capt.  Cloud:  "  Well,  my  General,  I  am  very 
glad  to  see  you,  but  regret  that  you  should  find 
things  so  desperate  as  they  are.  For  God's  sake 
gallop  to  the  rear  and  collect  all  the  stragglers,  tlie 
artillery  and  everything  possible  for  defense,  on 
the  bluffs  beyond  the  creek.  They  are  flanking 
me.  I  must  fall  -back  to  the  next  hill  in  a  few 
minutes.  The  men  are  discouraged,  and  have  no 
confidence  in  the  General,  who  has  been  running 
for  more  than  a  hundred  miles,  and  much  of  the 
time  far  more  precipitately  than  necessary. 

"My  boys  are  better  than  veterans,  because 
they  do  not  know  Avhen  they  are  whipped.  They 
are  all  my  friends  now." 

Gen.  J :  "  My  anticipations  are  more  than 

realized.  The  scout  can  command  and  inspire 
others  to  action.  My  staff  are  rallying  stragglers 
at  the  point  indicated.  I  will  hasten  back.  Don't 
let  them  capture  your  fine,  brave  feUows ;  and 
send  me  word  occasionally  at  what  time  you 
will  probably  be  obliged  to  fall  back  to  that 
point,  and  I  will  send  you  word  how  the  out-look 
is  for  defense." 

Capt.  C :    "  They  can  never  drive  me  to 

the  creek  to-day." 

Gen.  J :  "  Well,  then,  by  to-morrow  I  shall 

be  organized.     I  shall  try  to  see  you  to-night." 

They  parted,  but  met  again  that  night. 

Capt.   C :    "Well,    General,    things     will 

appear  better  in  the  morning  than  they  did 
to-day  l" 

Gen.  J :  "Oh,  yes,  Captain.      Everyone 

will  be  in  his  place,  and  I  shall  have  some  veteran 


regiments  here  before  day-light.  I  hope  we  can 
soon  turn  the  joke  on  the  blue-coats." 

Capt.  C :  "  I  was  pleased  to  hear  the  court 

acquitted  you." 

Gen.  J :  "Yes;  and  I  plead  guilty  to  the 

specification  of  disrespect  to  my  commanding 
officer,  and  told  the  court,  in  his  presence,  that  if 
I  had  ever  shown  bim  any  respect,  I  begged  his 
pardon." 

The  scene  changes  to  the  bivouac  cf  Cloud's 
officers. 

Capt.  S :  "  Well,  Lieutenant,  Capt.  Cloud 

is  a  trump." 

Lieut.  M :  "  Yes,  I  cannot  see  how  he  es- 
capes death.  He  does  not  seem  to  think  of 
danger  for  himself,  but  is  very  careful  about  ex- 
posing the  men." 

Generals  J and  Cloud  meet. 

Gen.  J :   "  Ha !  there,  Gen.  Cloud,  whence 

did  3'ou  hail?" 

Gen.  C :  "  How  are  you.  Gen.  J ?    I  did 

not  expect  to  meet  you.  I  left  the  army  the  da)'' 
after  the  battle  of  Spottsylvania  Court-house, 
and  came  out  here  to  testify  before  a  court-mar- 
tial to-day.  I  am  waiting  for  the  train  to  come 
along,  to  return  to  my  post.  How  do  you  hap- 
pen to  be  here  ?  " 

Gen.  J :  "  I  have  been  up  to  M on  busi- 
ness, and  have  just  arrived  on  the  west-bound 
train,  returning  to  my  command,  which  has,  since 
Longstreet  evacuated  East  Tennessee,  been 
slowly  verging  toward  the  East." 

Gen.  C :    "  Come,  General,  and  sit  down 

with  me  in  the  waiting-room,  and  tell  me  about 
my  boy,  and  your  rough-and-tumble  fall  and 
winter  campaigns  in  the  Tennessee  mountains. 
I  have  heard  of  your  terrible  sufferings,  both 
from  hunger  and  cold." 

Gen.  J :  "  I  guess  I  will  do  that,  General, 

and  then  sleep  until  morning,  instead  of  riding  to 
my  command  to-night,  as  I  intended  doing.  We 
may  not  soon  meet  again.  Cloud.  It  is  a  long 
time  since  Gettysburg,  yet  this  is  the  first  time 
we  have  met  in  all  those  days. 

"  We  are  of  the  true  old  revolutionary  stock  of 
yeomanry.  Cloud,  S3'mpathetic,  kindred  spirits, 
who  understand  and  can  appreciate  each  other. 
Your  boy  is  the  same :  sturdy,  watchful,   active, 


THE  TKANSFER,  AND  PART  OF  ITS  SEQUEL. 


Ill 


cool,  self-reliant,  and  reliable, — acquitting  himself 
at  all  times  and  under  all  circumstances  with  the 
same  comparative  degree  of  credit  that  he  ac- 
quitted himself  in  the  army  of  Northern  Virginia. 

"On  my  arrival  here  I  found  the  situation  all 
but  hopeless;  no  discipline;  more  like  a  mob 
than  an  army.  By  the  first  of  November  I  had 
discipline,  and  the  men  were  fairly  drilled. 

"  On  the  4th  day  of  November,  I  set  out  to 
surprise  Burnside's   cavalry,  nearly  one  hundred 

miles  from  my  camp,   at  R ,  down  on  the 

Holstein  River,  near  Clinch  Mountain.  I  marched 
(lay  and  night,  until  the  morning  of  the  6th,  at 
daybreak.  Then  I  surprised  and  captured  a  large 
part  of  the  command,  with  valuable  trains,  stores, 
and  treasure,  and  returned  in  safety  with  all  the 
booty  and  prisoners. 

"  To  give  you  an  idea  of  the  commanders  I 
found  here :  The  colonel  of  a  regiment  of  mounted 
infantry  had  never  joined  me  until  after  the 
fighting  was  over  that  day.  I  sent  him  an  order 
to  escort  the  captured  trains,  and  press  forward 
all  night  with  the  utmost  vigor,  while  I  followed 
with  prisoners,  horses,  and  my  command.  Be- 
fore day  this  home-guard  hero  got  tired  and 
sleepy,  and  went  into  camp.  This  blocked  the 
road,  -and  delayed  the  column  about  an  hour, 
before  I  could  work  my  way  to  him.  He  had 
never  met  me.  Wanted  to  know  what  I  had  to 
do  with  it.     I  was  flatly  told  that  he  captured  the 

train,  and  would  do  as  he pleased  with  it.    I 

put  him  under  arrest,  and  never  let  up  until  he 
was  cashiered. 

"  The  first  day  out  I  put  Capt.  Garland  under 
arrest  half  a  day,  on  account  of  a  gun  going  off 
in  his  command;  but  it  was  for  effect  in  the  com- 
mand more  than  anything  else,  although  he 
answered  me  rather  curtly  when  I  rode  up  and 
asked  him  about  it. 

"  On  the  morning  of  January  1st,  1864,  with  the 
mercury  below  zero,  we  set  out  and  marched  day 
and  night  for  forty-eight  hours ;  and  fought  all 
day  at  the  end  of  the  march,  when  the  enemy 
surrendered.  I  had  more  men  frozen  to  death 
than  were  killed  in  the  fight. 

"  Sometime  after  this,  I  surprised  and  captured 
a  regiment  of  infantry,  near  Cumberland  Gap. 

"  During  all  this  time  we  had  no  tents  or  other 


shelters,  and  no  cooking  utensils ;  for  forty  days 
we  never  saw  our  baggage,  nor  a  clean  shirt; 
and  we  subsisted  for  seven  days  at  one  time  on 
a  little  parched  corn.  Our  bread,  when  we  had 
any,  was  unsifted  corn-meal,  made  up  on  an  oil- 
cloth and  baked  before  the  fire  on  a  chip,  or  a  flat 
rock. 

"Capt.  Garland's  and  other  scouting  parties 
severely  damaged  the  enemy  in  no  small  way.  He 
was  sent  against  some  large  bands  of  bushwhack- 
ers, and  saw  some  rough  times,  but  destroyed  them 
in  the  end.  They  captured  him  once,  and  had 
the  rope  ready  to  hang  him ;  but  finally  let  him 
go  on  some  mutual  truce,  with  apparently  all  the 
advantage  in  their  favor.  I  think  they  were  in- 
fluenced by  the  threat  that  every  cabin  would  be 
burnt,  and  all  the  women  and  children  carried  off 
to  a  fort,  in  retaliation  for  any  harm  inflicted  on 
him. 

"Another  time  he  rode  into  a  regiment  of 
Federal  cavalry  alone,  when  reconnoitering  in  a 
dense  fog ;  but  the  quick  and  well-trained  horse 
wheeled  and  brought  him  out  of  the  danger  be- 
fore a  move  was  made  to  prevent  it. 

"  On  another  occasion,  when  reconnoitering  on 
foot,  he  was  captured;  but  escaped  by  jumping 
from  the  wagon  in  which  he  was  being  trans- 
ported and  guarded  with  some  infantry  prison- 
ers to  the  rear,  through  a  rough  country,  on  a 
dark  night,  and  was  in  his  saddle  again  at  day- 
break. 

"  He  has  served  as  a  member  of  a  court-martial; 
and  I  sent  him  to  take  command  of  the  lame- 
horse  camp,  where  a  large  number  of  men  imagined 
they  had  found  a  bomb-proof  for  the  war ;  but 
he  soon  broke  it  up.  I  never  saw  a  hardier 
soldier." 

Gen.  C :     "  You   have   suffered   fearfully. 

General.  With  us,  we  are  coming  to  the  final 
stage,  and  the  last  scene.  We  will  never  be  north 
of  Richmond  again.  That  is  the  universal  feeling 
among  both  officers  and  men.  We  had  87,000 
muskets  at  the  first  of  the  Wilderness.  Every 
day  the  number  decreases,  and  we  enroll  no  more 
recruits." 

Gen.  J :  "Yes,  Cloud,  the  end  cannot  be 

far  now. 

"  How  is  the  little  hero,  Col.  Flowers?" 


112 


MYSTIC  EOMAXCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


Gen.  C :   "Safe  and  well.     There  is  hardly 

more  than  a  corporal's  guard  of  his  original  regi- 
ment left.  I  hear  my  train  coming  to  part  us, 
General." 

Gen.  -T :   '•  Ah,  Cloud,  to  part  us  !    that  is 

the  word!  Yes,  to  part  us!  but  till  when? 
Echo  must  answer!  " 

Gen.  C :  "  We  cannot  tell.    God  bless  you, 

my  friend.     Farewell." 

Gen.  J :  "  I  part  with  you  sadly,  Cloud.    I 

feel  some  strange  sensation,  which  I  suppose  they 
term  a  presentiment,  that  one  of  us  is  under  the 
wing  of  the  Death  Angel.  I  hope  that  it  is  not 
you.     Farewell." 

The  campaigns  referred  to  in  the  foregoing 
conversation  have  been  much  under-estimated 
by  the  historian.  Upon  them  and  their  results 
most  important  issues  depended ;  great  interests 
were  involved  in  their  decision. 

Early  in  September,  1863,  important  events 
were  transpiring  in  East  Tennessee.  Chattanooga 
Avas  the  great  objective  and  strategic  point  — 
the  Federals  the  defenders,  the  Confederates  the 
aggressors.  With  the  latter  the  gods  of  war  long 
seemed  disposed  to  be  most  propitious. 

But  early  in  the  fall  campaign  a  most  disas- 
trous reversal  of  the  fortunes  of  war  became  the 
heritage  of  the  Confederates,  that  then  greatly 
marred  and  ultimately  dissipated  all  their  dearly 
bought  yet  vital  advantages. 

This  great  and  irreparable  misfortune  was  the 
loss  of  Knoxville,  the  key  of  upper  East  Tennes- 
see, which  severed  direct  communication  between 
Generals  Lee  and  Bragg,  and  deprived  the  Con- 
federates of  a  large — and  one  of  the  most  bounti- 
ful— supply  districts  in  the  Southern  States ;  with 
its  wheat  crop  but  recently  harvested,  and  its 
abundant  and  maturing  corn  crop  still  in  the 
fields,  its  cattle  and  swine  in  the  pasture  and  the 
forest. 

If  this  was  all  but  hopelessly  ruinous  to  the 
Confederates,  it  was  incomparably  valuable  to  the 
Federal  army,  and  became  at  once  the  source  of 
vitality  to  man  and  beast  in  the  Union  camp. 

For  these  potent  reasons,  it  at  once  became  the 
purpose  of  the  Confederates  to  drive  the  Union 
troops  out  of  the  district ;  that  of  the  latter  to 
liold  the  desirable  country  at  any  sacrifice. 


This  foreshadowed  desj^erate  struggles,  trying 
hardsliips,  and  excruciating  suflferings. 

The  country  is  broken,  mountainous,  and  inter- 
spersed with  rapid  rivers,  rising  in  the  mountains 
and  rapidly  decending  to  the  valleys. 

Gen.  Burnside  commanded  a  powerful  and  well- 
equipped  army  with  which  to  hold  the  disputed 
territory.  Opposed  to  this  formidable  host  was 
little  better  than  a  rabble — a  mob — a  few  thousand 
ragged,  poorly-armed,  poorly-fed,  and  undisci- 
plined troops. 

Hence  the  Federal  army  took  up  a  triumphant 
line  of  march  for  South-western  Yirginia,  meet- 
ing little  more  opposition  from  its  feeble  adver- 
saries than  is  usually  met  in  the  skillful  resistance 
of  a  well-disciplined  picket  force. 

This  march  continued  uninterruptedly  until  the 
Confederates  were  driven  out  of  Tennessee,  and 
the  Federal  army  had  entered  the  fruitful  blue- 
grass  region  of  South-western  Vitginia. 

Here  Gen.  J comes  upon  the  scene  once 

more,  and  the  Federal  commander  finds  himself 
not  only  check-mated  but  also  out-manoeuvred, 
and  forced  to  retreat  without  accepting  the  chal- 
lenge to  combat. 

Gen.  J soon  brought  order  and  discipline 

into  requisition  and  practice,  and  restored  confi- 
dence in  the  ranks  of  his  little  army. 

In  less  than  two  months  he  surprised,  routed 
and  captured  a  large  part  of  Burnside's  cavalry, 
with  the  camp  equipments,  trains,  stores  and 
treasure  of  great  vj^lue. 

In  the  meantime,  Lieut.-Gen.  Longstreet  was 
detached,  with  a  strong  army  corps  from  the 
Confederate  army,  in  front  of  Chattanooga,  and 
advanced  by  rapid  forced  marches  upon  Knox- 
ville and  the  rear  of  Burnside,  Avho  was  thus 
forced  to  fall  back  precipitately,  and  take  refuge 
behind  the  defenses  of  Knoxville,  where  was  his 

depot  of  supplies.      Gen.  J followed  in  his 

footsteps. 

In  a  short  time  Knoxville  was  a  Ijeleaguered 
city,  Burnside's  army  suffering  the  pangs  of  a 
siege  beneath  the  gathei'ing  pall  of  desjjair;  for 
starvation  or  unconditional  capitulation  daily 
grew  to  be  inevitable  alternatives  as  the  meagre 
stores  of  provisions  steadily  diminished. 

Gen.  Bragg's  disastrous  repulse   at  Missionary 


THE  TRANSFER,  AND  PART   OF  ITS   SEQUEL. 


113 


Eidge  constituted  the  foundation  of  hope  for  the 
l.esieged.  Reilef  may  be  sent  from  Chattanooga ; 
but  could  it  arrive  in  time  ? 

The  situation  was  famiHar  to  G-en.  Longstreet. 
If  he  could  capture-  Knoxville  and  its  defenders, 
he  might  then  turn  on  the  column  marching  to 
theirrehef,  and  rout  or  annihilate  it;  while  should 
it  come  upon  his  rear,  he  would  have  no  al- 
ternative but  to  raise  the  siege  and  retreat  in 
the  direction  of  Virginia.  This  would  expose 
his  colun:in  to  an  attack  in  the  flank,  and  its  re- 
treat to  be  cut  oflf  by  a  column  of  the  Federal 
army  marching  from  Cumberland  Gap,  also,  de- 
signed to  aid  in  the  relief  of  the  imperiled 
army  of  Burnside.  Gen.  Sherman  was  detached 
from  tlie  Federal  army  at  Chattanooga,  with  a 
grand  corps,  for  the  diUverance  of  his  distressed 
comrades  at  Knoxville. 

Gen.  J had  completed  the  cordon  of  in- 
vestment which  consummated  Burnside's  environ- 
ment, while  Maj.-Gen.  Ransom,  with  a  fine 
division^  from  the  army  of  Northern  Virginia, 
was  advancing  to  support  and    assist  Longstreet. 

The  situation  was  critical.  The  suffering  sus- 
pense of  Gen.  Burnside's  army  became  intense, 
and  daily  grew  more  painfully  hopeless. 

On  the  28th  of  November  the  beleagured 
army  was  reduced  to  desperate  straits.  But  a 
few  rations  of  bran  and  the  mules  and  horses 
remained  as  a  supply  for  subsistence.  To  add  to 
the  distress  and  discomfiture  of  the  besieged 
Longstreet  kept  up  a  terrific  bombardment  both 
day  and  night,  to  which,  however,  Burnside  re- 
plied with  spirit  and  serious  effect. 

Up  to  this  date  the  weather  had  been  extremely 
mild.  But  on  this  night,  winter  set  in  vigorously ; 
and  Long-street's  preparations  to  attempt  to  take 
Knoxville  by  storm  were  complete. 

His  bombardment  was  vigorous  and  appallingly 
redoubled  at  this  time 

The  winter  wind  blew  a  sweeping  gale,  that 
roared  and  howled  and  thundered  in  the  mount- 
ains, the  hills,  the  ravines,  and  the  forests  with 
which  Knoxville  is  surrounded,  and  almost  lifted 
sentinels,  pioneers  and  gunners  off  their  feet. 
Apparently,  it  had  defiantly  risen  to  outrival  the 
deafening  terrors  of  the  antagonists'  cannon, 
beneath  whose  pealing  shocks  the  ground  trem- 


Ijled  for  miles  around,  and  whose  reverberations 
clashed  and  crashed  and  groaned  as  they  met  and 
mingled  with  the  wailing  moans  of  the  tempest's 
icy  breath. 

Screaming  shells  filled  the  air.  These  terrible 
projectiles  exploded  continuously,  lighting  up  the 
scowling  elements  in  one  incessant  blaze,  while 
portions  of  shells  and  their  charges  of  missiles 
came  hissing  down  among  the  troops  on  duty 
and  those  vainly  seeking  to  sleep  in  their  biv- 
ouacs. It  was  thus  rendered  truly  a  night  of  grim 
terrors ! 

Long  before  day-light  Longstreet's  columns  of 
assault  were  moving  on  the  flaming  batteries,  and 
against  breast-works,  battlements  and  parapets, 
with  deep  trenches  and  ditches  in  front,  guided 
by  the  reflection  of  light  streaming  from  rifles  and 
cannon — Gen.  McLaws  commanded  the  assaulting 
troops. 

The  objective  point  was  Temperance  Hill,  upon 
which  stood  the  frowning  battlements  of  a  for- 
midable fortress — the  key  of  Knoxville. 

With  the  famishing  Federals,  it  is  a  supreme 
moment.  They  know  the  columns  of  their  fi-iends 
are  hastening  to  their  succor;  and,  nerved  by  des- 
peration and  the  all  but  forlorn  hope  of  rehef, 
they  nobly  man  the  works,  stand  to  their  guns, 
and  bravely  vow  to  die  or  hold  the  fort. 

Above  the  roar  of  the  wind  and  the  thunder 
of  cannon  rose  the  clear  notes  of  the  song  from 
lips  pale  with  cold  and  quivering  with  emotion — 
"  Hold  the  Fort,  for  I  am  coming." 

Telegraph  wires  had  been  stretched  by  the 
Federal  troops  on  the  outer  edges  of  their 
trenches,  in  order  that  they  might  trip  the  ad- 
A-ancing  Confederates  and  precipitate  them  head 
foremost  into  the  ditches. 

As  they  approached  the  works,  a  withering  fire 
of  musketry  greeted  them.  The  advance  fine — 
or  rather  the  first  men  of  the  disordered  mass — 
for  lines  and  columns  there  were  none — was 
precipitated  into  the  ditch.  Their  yelling  friends 
came  rushing  madly  forward  to  meet  the  same 
fate,  falling,  with  fixed  bayonets,  upon  those  who 
had  fallen  before  them.  The  sappers  and  miners 
of  the  pioneer  corps,  with  axes  and  scaling-ladders, 
were  inextricably  blended  in  the  disorder  and 
confusion,  and   proved   a  detriment,  rather   than 


114 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES   OF   THE  BLL'E  AND  THE   GREY. 


a  benefit  to  the  assault.  Men  behind  could  know 
nothing  of  the  situation  in  front.  On  they  rushed 
to  helpless  destruction. 

Want  of  harmony  and  concert  of  purpose  or 
actual  misunderstanding,  if  not  disobedience  of 
orders,  seemed  to  prevail  among  the  Confederate 
commanders.  Longstreet  claimed  that  his  orders 
were  disobeyed ;  but  this  pretext  often  serves  the 
turn  of  commanders  as  an  excuse  for  their  failure. 

While  Longstreet  was  the  Ney  of  the  Confed- 
erate army,  as  a  lieutenant  to  an  able  com- 
mander, as  a  detached  and  independent  com- 
mander, forced  to  rely  on  his  own  skill  and 
strategy,  he  was  a  monumental  failure  to  rival 
poor  Banks  or  Burnside. 

To  add  to  the  horrors  of  the  sanguinary  scene, 
the  Federal  troops  behind  the  breastworks  and 
in  the  fort  hurled  a  shower  of  hand  grenades  on 
to  the  struggling  mass  of  Confederates  in  the 
trenches  and  ditches, while  grape-shot  and  minnic- 
balls  literally  swept  the  face  of  the  ground  upon 
which  the  Southern  troops  stood. 

The  result  of  the  assault  remained  not  long  in 
suspense. 

The  capture  of  the  threatened  fort  would 
quickly  seal  the  doom  of  the  beleaguered  army; 
but  the  storming  column  Avas  ill-starred. 

Again  and  again  the  baffled  Confederates  made 
the  vain  attempt  to  carry  the  works  by  storm 
only  to  be  met  anew  by  discomfiture  and  over- 
whelmed by  fresh  disaster. 

By  noon  the  forlorn  assault  was  abandoned,  and 
a  truce  established,  in  order  to  care  for  the 
wounded  and  bury  the  dead. 

The  Confederate  loss  was  appaUing.  The  dead 
were  in  tiers  and  heaps  in  and  around  the 
trenches,  mingled  with  and  often  under  whom 
Avere  helpless  wounded  men  in  great  numbers. 
Thus  terminated  the  plan  to  take  the  city  by  storm. 
Now  came  the  alternative  of  reducing  the  gar- 
rison to  submission  by  starvation.  To  insure  this 
result,  but  a  very  few  days  would  be  required. 

But  before  these  critical  days,  that  contained 
so  much  suspended  destiny  for  the  combatants, 
should  come  and  go,  the  advancing  columns  would 
arrive  to  succor  the  distressed  and  famishing 
Federals. 

Nothing  remained  for  the  Confederates  but  to 


retard  the  advance  of  these  columns  until  hunger, 
cold  and  despair  forced  Burnside  to  surrender  or 
to  raise  the  siege  and  retreat. 

Longstreet  determined  to  hazard  the  former 
chance. 

The  column,  advancing  from  Cumberland  Gap, 

was  met  and  driven  back  by  Gen.  J ,  Avhile 

Sherman  was  greatly  annoyed  at  finding  the 
direct  route  im2')raeticable  and  a  swollen  river  to 
cross.  Opposition  frowned  on  its  banks.  Bridges 
and  ferries  were  destroyed.  The  prospect  of 
rescuing  his  friends  became  desperate. 

But  the  stakes  for  which  he  played  were  too 
high  for  an  ambitious  and  rising  commander 
to  yield  resignedly,  and  to  Avithdraw  from  the 
desperate  game  Avith  placid  indifference ;  and  he 
persevered. 

After  much  fatiguing  eflbrt,  he  succeeded  in 
surmounting  many  formidable  and  opposing  bar- 
riers, and  effected  a  crossing  of  the  river. 

But,  Avas  he  not  too  late?  He  would  most 
undoubtedly*  be  obliged  to  pass  over  ground  stub- 
bornly contested  inch  by  inch,  before  Burnside 
Avould  be  reheved.  If  he  could  only  apprise  him 
that  the  river  had  been  passed,  and  relief,  if  tardy, 
was  sure.  But  could  such  tidings  pass  the  close 
and  vigilant  cordon  of  investment,  which  would 
be  more  than  usually  alert?  Nothing  Avas  more 
certain  than  that  the  Federal  commander  would 
attempt  to  send  a  messenger  through  Longstreet's 
lines  into  Knoxville.  And  unusual  watchfulness 
Avas  maintained,  with  the  hope  of  intercepting 
any  one  who  might  make  the  attempt. 

HoAvever,  a  shrcAvd  and  daring  officer  in  Sher- 
man's command  undertook  the  perilous  duty; 
not  only  undertook,  but  also  accomplished  it 
most  successfully. 

Upon  the  arrival  of  this  welcome  messenger, 
Burnside  suspended  negotiations,  in  order  to  con- 
sider terms  of  surrender,  and  assumed  a  defiant 
attitude. 

This  decided  the  fate  of  the  siege.  It  was  raised 
by  Longstreet  during  the  night,  and  he  began  a 
retreat  but  little  more  promising  than  Burnside's 
predicament  had  been  for  so  many  days. 

Yet,  however,  he  succeeded  in  extricating  his 
army  and  saving  his  train  and  munitions  through- 
out a  harassing  retreat. 


THE  TRANSFER,  AND  PART  OF  ITS  SEQUEL. 


115 


Gen.  J prevented   the    Cumberland    Gap 

column  from  attacking  Longstreet's  flank,  hover- 
ing with  his  intrepid  cavalry,  for  many  days, 
lietv/een  the  two  antagonists,  and  often  fighting 
desperately. 

For  many  days  and  nights  his  command  passed 
tlie  day  in  battle  array  and  the  night  in  the  saddle, 
with  no  rations  but  a  httle  corn,  which  the  men 
rarely  had  fire  to  parch ;  and,  in  addition,  the 
weather  was  very  cold. 

Thus  Longstreet's  campaign  failed,  and  left 
tiie  Federal  army  in  indisputed  possession  of  the 
long  contested  and  vitally  important  territory, 
with  a  line  of  direct  communication  between  Vir- 
Linia  and  the  South-west. 

This  was  a  deadly  wound  to  the  Confederacy, 
and  assured  the  practicability  of  Gen.  Sherman's 
march  to  the  sea  and  the  dismemberment  of  the 
Southern  Empire. 

Burnside  pursued  Longstreet  and  encamped  at 
Bean's  Station,  a  beautiful  watering  place  some 
miles  from  where  the  Confederate  commander 
had  halted,  at  the  pretty  town  of  Eodgersville, 
i-esolved  to  retreat  no  farther. 

After  a  few  days,  Longstreet,  with  true  bull- 
dog tenacity, — his  predominating  characteristic, 
which  rendered  him  in\ancible  when  simply  exe- 
cuting an  order  under  Gen.  Lee, — turned  upon  his 
adversary  and  assaulted  his  position  with  the 
sudden  impetuosity  of  an  irresistible  avalanche. 

It  is  a  clear,  still,  sharp  December  morning  as 
Longstreet's  grey  columns,  like  undulating  waves, 
roll  steadily  and  grandly  down  the  charming 
valleys  and  over  the  picturesque  hillocks,  which 
intersperse  the  intervening  miles  that  separate  the 
contending  armies. 

Soon  the  thrilling  notes  of  the  rifle  ring 
through  the  calm  and  frosty  air,  as  the  advancing 
Confederates  rush  upon  and  sweep  from  their 
path  the  Federal  pickets,  to  startle  the  Union 
troops,  cracking  jokes  and  cooking  breakfast  in 
tranquil  serenity  around  their  camp-fires. 

Unsuspecting  disturbance  from  the  noAv  foiled 
and  crippled  Confederates,  the  Federal  troops  are 
but  little  prepared  for  this  abrupt  summons  to 
Vjattle. 

Close  upon  the  heels  of  the  hard-pressed  and 
rapidly  driven  pickets  are   the  yelling  enthused 


Confederates.  The  thundering  of  the  hoofs  and 
the  roar  of  the  wheels  of  the  artillery  trains  roll 
away  from  the  frozen  road  in  ominous  tumult 
and  reverberate,  echo  and  re-echo  away  back 
amid  mountain  crags  and  ravines  and  over  the 
Federal  camp. 

Intense  excitement  is  prevailing  in  the  Union 
camp,  but  it  is  unmixed  with  symptoms  of  panic 
or  even  disorder.  As  batteries  gallop  into  posi- 
tion and  regiments  swing  into  line  of  battle  at 
double-quick  step,  Longstreet's  grey  lines  de- 
bouch into  the  open  valley  in  front  of  Burnside's 
position,  which  they  move  upon  with  unfaltering 
steps,  apparently  contemptuous  of  the  tornado  of 
shot  and  shell  which  sweep  and  rend  the  face  of 
the  ground  over  which  they  rush. 

Such  are  moments  in  which  the  hearts  of 
men,  with  all  their  hopes  and  inspirations,  seem 
to  soar  upward  to  the  stars  of  heaven,  whether, 
alas !  the  souls  of  many  follow  swift  and   soon. 

Burnside  is  everywhere  hurled  back  from  the 
field  and  driven  until  darkness  in  mercy  spreads 
lier  sable  mantle,  to  close  the  sanguinary  conflict 
and  murderous  carnage. 

Gen.  J is  master  of  Burnside's  rich  supply 

train. 

Longstreet  procrastinates  a  whole  da.y. 

The  second  morning,  long  before  daylight, 
however,  he  advances  in  solid  phalanx,  with  his 
whole  force  upon  Burnside's  new  position,  san- 
guine that  dawn  of  day  will  witness  it  over- 
Avhelmed  by  an  irresistible  onslaught,  only  to 
find  the  works  and  camp  evacuated.  Burnside 
withdrew  during  the  night,  retreating  in  the 
direction  of  Knoxville. 

Longstreet  has  few  fruits  of  his  victory. 

He  has  lost  the  opportunity  of  achieving  a 
grand  triumph,  and  retires  inactively  into  winter 
quarters. 

Gen.  J ,  in  the    meantime,  prosecutes  an 

active  cavalry  campaign  throughout  the  winter, 
inflicting  much  damage  on  the  enemy,  but  at  the 
cost  of  extreme  hardships  and  great  suffering 
from  exposure  to  cold  and  hunger,  numbers  of 
his  men  freezing  to  death  in  (heir  saddles. 

Garland  Cloud  was  one  of  the  dashing  horse- 
men who  accompanied  his  cool,  sagacious,  and 
skillful   commander  in  tnese  perilous   mountain 


116 


MYSTIC   EOMANOES   OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


expeditions,  and  whose  confidence  the  young 
mountaineer  possessed  in  a  degree  due  only  to 
educated  and  experienced  officers.  For  this  reason 
many  important  and  dangerous  duties  fell  to  the 
lo-t  o£  young  Cloud,  by  the  directions  of  his 
brave  and  devoted  commander. 

History  tells  not  the  story  of  this  chivalrous 
general  of  the  Old  Dominion,  who  merited  eulo- 
gies to  rival  those  lavished  upon  more  conspic- 
aous  but  never  more  deserving  leaders. 

With  a  small  force  he  destroyed  more  than 
hvice  his  number  in  the  Federal  ranks,  captured 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars'  worth  in  stores 
within  the  space  of  six  months,  with  a  loss 
of  less  than  one  hundred  men,  from  all  causes, 
in  his  own  ranks.  Few  others,  iii  either  army, 
could  claim  such  results  in  a  winter  campaign 
amid  the  mountains ;  yet  he  received  no  adequate 
credit  at  the  time,  nor  iias  justice  suice  been  ren- 
dered to  his  name. 

History  has  told  the  story  of  Longstreet's 
change  of  base  from  his  East  Tennessee  winter 
quarters  to  the  field  of  the  wilderness,  a  tale, 
therefore,  unnecessary  for  us  to  repeat. 


CHAPTER  XXVII. 

THE    MIDNIGHT    MEETING,   AND    SEQUEL, 

"'TIS  night  when  meditation  bids  us  feel 

We  once  have  lov'd,  though  love  is  at  an  end  ; 
The  heart  lone  mourner  of  its  baffled  zeal, 

Though  friendless  novr  still  dreams  it  has  a  friend." 
— Byeon. 

The  early  summer  days  of  18G4  did  not  find 
the  army  of  Northern  Virginia  checkmating  the 
army  of  the  Potomac,  as  the  previous  year  had 
witnessed  it  doing. 

Now  the  early  June  flowers  find  that  once 
proud  and  invincible  army  still  dragging  its 
shattered,  bleeding  columns  along  the  despair- 
ing retreat  from  the  disastrous '  Field  of  G-ettys- 
burg  "  up  to  the  very  gates  of  the  Confederate 
Capitol. 

And,  0  Grod !  what  a  retreat  I  A  whole  year 
from  Grettysburg  to  Richmond!  What  a  sterile 
track  hes  in  its  wake !  Fredericksburg,  the  Wil- 
derness, Spottsylvania  Court-house,  each  and  all 


the  ghastly  tomb  of  army  corps!  Now  comes 
the  appalling  slaughter-pens  of  Cold  Harbor. 

All  the  available  troops  are  drawn  from  every 
quarter  of  the  South  to  the  defense  of  Richmond. 
The  chivalrous  Breckenridge  leaves  the  valley  of 
Virginia,  and  hastens  to  the  support  of  G-en. 
Lee,  which  leaves  the  road  open  to  Lynchburg 
and  Danville,  in  rear  of  Lee  and  Richmond.  The 
temptation  is  too  great  to  resist. 

Maj.-Gen.  Hunter,  with  a  fine  army,  is  dis- 
patched from  Harper's  Ferry  and  Winchester,  to 
seize  this  favorable  opportunity  to  cut  off  Gen. 
Lee's  comunications  with  the  South.  He  moves 
unopposed  by  rapid  forced  marches  up  the  valle}' 
turnpike.  The  situation  is  appalling.  In  two 
days  more  he  will  pass  Staunton.  G-en.  Lee  is 
powerless. 

He  can  throw  no  force  adequate  to  cope  with 
this  army,  in  its  pathway,  short  of  Lynchburg; 
nor  is  there  time  for  this  move  to  avert  the 
threatened  danger. 

G-en.  Lee  detaches  G-en.  E with  a  corj^s  to 

save  Lynchburg  and  to  protect  his  rear.  It  is 
found  that  Hunter  has  a  day's  march  the  advan- 
tage, and  will  reach  Lynchburg  first  unless  his 
progress  can  be  arrested  for  one  day.  But  there 
are  no  troops  in  the  land  that  can  be  thrown  in 
his  path  in  sufficient  force  in  time  to  arrest  his 
marcli  for  an  hour. 

The  eyes  of  the  South  and  the  Confederate 

army  now  turn  to  G-en.  J in  the  South-west. 

He  may  throw  one-tenth  of  Hunter's  numbers 
in  his  path,  composed  of  raw  militia,  dismounted 
cavalry,  and  a  few  decimated  regiments  of 
infantry. 

The  plan  is  conceived,  the   order  issued,  and 

G-en.  J proceeds  by  rail  to  Staunton  barely 

in  time  to  meet  Hunter's  advance  one  day's 
march  down  the  pike.  What  a  forlorn  pros- 
pect! But  it  is  the  last  hope  for  the  South  and 
Lee. 

G-en.  Lee  knows  and  appreciates  his  man. 

Gen.  J is  the  right  man  in  the  right  place; 

and  he  has  lieutenants  upon  whom  he  can 
depend  in  such  crises  as  great  emergencies  some- 
times develop. 

There  is  little  time  for  preparation,  less  neces- 
sity  for  special   and   systematic    disposition    to 


THE   MIDNIGHT   MEETING,  AND   SEQUEL. 


117 


meet  the  enemy,  because  there  is  no  certainty 
which  road  he  will  choose. 

The  alert  vigilance  of  Gen.  J assures  him 

the  knowledge  of  his  adversary's  movements  far 
enough  in  advance  to  intercept  his  march,  no 
matter  on  which  road  ;_  and  he  assumes  an  inter- 
mediate position,  and  waits. 

It  is  Saturday  evening,  the  4th  day  of  June ; 

midsummer    heat   prevails.      But   Gen.    J 's 

bivouac  is  in  a  dense  grove  of  timber :  hence  it  is 
shady,  cool,  enjoyable  as  a  peaceful  scene. 

But  the  anticipations  of  the  morrow, — these 
mar  the  refreshing  enjoyment  of  the  cooling 
mountain  zephyrs  which  sigh  and  chant  their 
plaintive  melody  amid  the  tender  leaflets  of  the 
forest;  sad  and  anxious  suspense  pervades  the 
camp. 

The  momentous  duty  which  had  devolved  on 
the  little  band  is  a  theme  for  solemn  reflection. 
Officers  and  men,  as  a  rule,  appear  meditative 
and  restless. 

But  in  the  little  camp  there  are  two  officers 
Avho  seem  to  have  flung  forgetfulness  around 
them,  and  to  be  indifferent  as  to  themselves. 
Seated  on  the  grass,  against  the  trunk  of  a  tree, 
they  are  intently  interested  in  a  closely  contested 
game  of  chess,  when  the  shadows  of  evening- 
close  over  them  to  suspend  their  pleasing  diver- 
sion. They  are  practiced  players,  too,  in  the 
game  of  life  and  death.  One  of  them  is  ]\faj. 
Brewer,  once  an  officer  in  the  old  army  of  the 
United  States,  a  member  of  an  old  chivalrous 
Maryland  family,  and  a  special  favorite  of  Gen. 
J ;  the  other  is  Garland  Cloud. 

Maj.  Brewer  :  "  Put  up  the  chess-men,  Capt. 
Cloud,  until  after  the  battle,  as  it  is  too  dark  to 
play.  To-morrow  we  must  doubtless  try  our 
skill  in  a  far  more  serious  game." 

Capt.  C :  "Yes,  and  get  checkmated,  too, 

with  the  odds  so  much  against  us.  But  whither 
goes  that  deep  drawn  sigh?" 

Maj.  B :   "  Back  to  my  Maryland's  shore, 

and  the  old  judge,  my  dear  father,  whom  I  shall 
never  see  again." 

Capt.  C— — •:  "Well,  Ave  cannot  divine  to-day 
what  is  in  the  store-house  of  Fate  for  to-morrow. 

'  Sufficient  unto  the  day '  you  know ,  so  let 

lis  try  to  sleep  the  sleep  of  the  innocent,  and 


dream  of  the  days  of  happy  childhood  that  we 
shall  never  see  again." 

Cloud  walks  away  for  a  few  moments. 

Maj.  B [Solus]:  "  Poor;:  impetuous,  philo- 
sophical, destiny-confiding  Cloud,  would  that  I 
could  share  your  contempt  for  the  dangers  of  the 
battle-storm." 

A  courier  rides  up  to  the  bivouac  after  they 
are  asleep. 

Courier  :  "  Gentlemen,   Maj.  B and  Capt. 

C ,  Gen.  J desires  to  see  you  at  once   at 

his  head-quarters." 

Capt.  C :  "  Some  desperate  enterprise  for 

us.  Major." 

Maj.  B :   "  This  is  what  I  have  anticipated 

for  several  days." 

They  mount  and  are  soon  before  their  General. 

Capt.  C ;    "Oh,  my  General!  this  is  the 

weird  midnight  taper  of  Gettysburg  again,  amid 
the  spectral  shadows  of  a  sombre  forest's  silent 
gloom.  Is  it  the  dark  shade  of  the  Death  Angel's 
wing  hovering  over  our  little  band  ?" 

Gen.   J :     "Yes,   Garland,  to-morrow    he 

will  swoop  down  upon  us.  But  this  is  that  mid- 
night meeting  which  I  told  you  would  come, 
when  we  parted  last,  in  the  lower  valley,  when 
you  were  settmg  out  for  the  infantry  camp. 
Just  two  weeks  ago  to-night  I  parted  with 
your  father  among  the  shadows  of  the  depot's 
flickering  midnight-lamp.  Day  before  yesterday 
he  was  in  the  hurricane  of  death  at  Cold  Harbor ; 
to-morrow  it  is  my  turn. 

"Gentlemen,  the  situation  is  desperate.  My 
orders  are  imperative  without  one  provisional  ex- 
ception. Gen.  Lee  dispatches  to  stop  Gen.  Hun- 
ter's march  one  day  at  any  cost.  Three  thousand 
seven  hundred  mixed  troops,  with  one  little  bat- 
tery, against  thirty  thousand  with  thirty  pieces 
of  heavy  field  ordnance.  At  last  the  day  comes 
for  us  to  prove  the  sincerity  of  our  first  love. 
To-morrow  our  waning  country's  altar  demands 
some  new  sacrifices.  Are  you  prepared  to  join 
with  me  to-night  in  a  solemn  pledge  to  devote 
ourselves  to  that  tottering  shrine  ?" 

Capt.  Cloud:   "Always,  now  and  forever." 

Maj.  Brewer:  "The  same  are  my  sentiments, 
my  resolve." 


118 


MYSTIC  EOMAxVCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


Qen.  J 

he  chanted : 


■  Byron  truly  sang  our  lot  when 


'  Vainly  his  Incense  burns,  his  victim  bleeds  :— 
Poor  child  of  doubt  and  death,  whose  hope  is  built  on 
reeds. ' 

"  The  enemy  have  obliqued,  and  will  advance 
up  the  Port  Eepublic  road.  We  must  cross  the 
river.  It  will  take  until  some  time  in  the  fore- 
noon to  get  all  the  forces  to  the  river,  across  and 
in  position  to  receive  the  enemy.  This  I  shall 
attempt  to  do  with  my  centre  resting  on  the  lit- 
tle village  of  P ,  my  left  on  the  river  bank, 

and  my  right  on  the  woodlands. 

"  I  wish  you  to  cross  the  river  without  delay  ; 
advance  through  a  grove  about  half  a  mile  be- 
yond P ,  and  there,  on  the  edge  of  the  field, 

post  your  seven  hundred  men  to  best  advantage: 
Cloud  on  the  right,  covering  the  road.  If  you 
are  prompt,  you  can  be  in  position  by  daybreak ; 
and  you  will  not  be  idle  many  moments.  Now 
hear  my  orders: 

"  Hold  the  enemy  in  check  until  I  send  you 
an  order  to  fall  back,  which  will  be  as  soon  as  I 
am  in  position,  provided  you  are  then  hard 
pressed.  Let  the  enemy  pass  your  post  only 
over  your  bodies.  Inspire  all  your  men  individ- 
ually with  this  unyielding  spirit.  Fight  in  your 
position — die  there  if  you  must  —  but  neither 
fight  nor  die  retiring.  I  pity,  but  cannot  help 
you.     May  God  give  you  aid. 

"  Eememher  my  parting  words  to  you,  Cloud, 
on  another  occasion,  and  apply  them  at  this  mo- 
ment.    Grol     Good-night." 

Capt.  C :  "  I  remember  them  well.  Good- 
night, my  General." 

Maj.  B :  "  I    will     remember    my    dut}^. 

Good-night,  my  General." 

They  rode  rapidly  away  to  obey  this  desperate 
order. 

Gen.  J :  "Ah!  Capt.  M ,  those  are  two 

noble  fellows  to  select  for  such  certain  doom. 
But  they  are  the  men  for  an  emergency  like  this; 
to  stand  unmoved,  after  the  last  spark  of  the 
most  forlorn  hope  is  extinct,  and  they  are  left 
enveloped  in  the  darkness  of  eternity." 

Now  Cloud  and  Brewer  appear  in  the  liattli'- 
storm. 


Maj.   B :   '"Look    out     there,  Captain,  the 

cavalrj'  is  going  to  charge  you  again."  ^ " 

Capt.  C :   "  You  will  find  out  in  a  moment 

what  kind  of  cavalry  that  is." 

Maj.  B :  "  I  see.    They  are  unliml^ering  gun 

after  gun,  not  more  than  five  hundred  )'ards  from 
our  line.  "What  an  ordeal!  We  must  endure  if, 
and  cannot  reply.  Our  two  little  guns  will  not 
last  ten  minutes.  They  intend  to  smoke  out  thiw 
hornets'  nest." 

Capt.  C :  "Look   Major!     The   prelude  i- 

over.  The  blue  waves  which  are  to  engulph  us 
are  beginning  to  roll  forward." 

Maj.  B :   "Come  a  little  this  way.     I  will 

meet  you.  The  crisis  is  at  hand,  Captain.  Let 
us  sell  our  lives  dearly.  How  do  j^ou  feel?  It 
seems  to  me  that  the  ferryman  of  the  dark  river 
has  me  by  the  hand.  Should  you  escape,  tell  my 
brother,  the  doctor,  to  let  all  the  family  know 
that  I  died,  as  our  ancestors  have  often,  worthy 
of  the  ancient  name  I  bear." 

Capt.  C :   "I   feel  that  our  doom  is  sealed. 

We  need  have  no  scruples  about  exposing  our- 
selves. Fortunately,  the  old  fence  ridge  affords 
the  men  much  protection ;  but  we  must  remain 
on  our  feet.  Let  us  walk  along  the  line,  and 
entreat  every  man  to  stand  up  to  his  duty  to 
the  death.  Poor  felloAvs,  how  nobly  they  have 
endured  this  torrent  of  iron  hail  for  nearly  three 
hours !  " 

The  scene  changes  to  the  field-hospital  of  the 
Federal  army. 

Maj.  Pleasington:  "Why,  Capt.  Cloud,  I  have 
searched  for  you  all  over  the  field.  One  of  5'our 
Avounded  officers  told  me  that  you  were  killed  up 
yonder  in  the  lane  by  a  cannon-ball;  that  your 
sword  was  picked  up,  with  a  severed  hand  firmly 
clasping  the  hilt. — How  are  you.  poor  fellow?" 

Capt.  C :  "My  sands  of  life  are  numbered, 

Major,  and  ebbing  out.  In  an  hour  from  now 
you  may  bury  me  up  yonder  beneath  that 
battle-scarred  willow-tree.  I  thought  to-day, 
during  the  storm  that  raged  around  me,  it  would 
be  a  quiet  resting-place.  Take  the  things  from 
my  pockets,  and  send  them  in  a  little  package 
to  my  mother.  You  know  where,  and  you  Avill 
find  a  way.  Send  with  them  a  line,  telling  how 
I    died,   and   how   and   where  you   buried  me. 


THE  MIDNIGHT  MEETING,  AND   SEQUEL. 


119 


Thank  God  that  you  are  here.  Stay  by  mo,  if  }ou 
can,  to  the  end;  it  will  not  be  long." 

Maj.  P :  "  Doctor,  come  here.      Save  this 

man,  who  ha.s  twice  saved  me.  He  is  bleeding  to 
death.     Don't  shake  your  head." 

SuRGEON-GrENERAL :  "  All  the  doctors  in  Chris- 
tendom can't  save  him,  Major.  He  Avould  die 
under  an  operation." 

Maj.  P ;  "  Pra}^,   then,   tell  me  how  long 

he  can  Hve  without  it?  " 

Surg.-Gen  :  "  Less  than  an  hour.  He  is  sink- 
ing rapidly." 

Capt.  C :  "You  need  not  talk  in  an  under- 
tone. Doctor.  Perform  the  operation.  If  I  should 
die  under  it.  Heaven  will  hold  you  blameless." 

Surg.-Gen:  "All  right.  I  must  do  it  myself. 
I  have  nobody  to  spare.  Our  own  wounded  are 
dying  for  want  of  attention." 

Capt.  C :  "  Thank  you,  Doctor.  Now,  Ma- 
jor, tell  me  about  the  battle." 

Maj.  P -:  "  We  were  nearly  whipped,  but 

now  we  hold  the  field,  and  are  camping  on  it 
to  night.     But  why  are  you  smiling?" 

Capt.  C :  "Only  because  the  object  of  our 

.sacrifice  is  attained." 

Maj.  P :  "  Your   gallant  Gen.   J lost 

his  life  leading  a  charge  on  our  disordered  hne, 
which  probably  saved  us  from  defeat.  Some  of 
his  class-mates  and  associates  in  the  old  army, 
are  burying  him  with  the  honors  of  war.  Maj. 
Brewer, who  fought  with  you,  is  mortallj'- wound- 
ed. He  wished  me  to  bear  you  his  greeting,  if 
I  found  you  alive,  and  to  tell  you  that  you  had 
fairly  won  a  colonel's  stars  to-day.  I  have 
promised  to  see  him  again.  He  saj^s  about  six- 
sevenths  of  your  mutual  force  remained  on  the 
field." 

Capt.  C :  "Now,  Major,  I  want  to  take  one 

last  look  at  this  summer  Sabbath's  setting  sun. 
There,  now,  I  am  ready  to  inhale  the  soothing 
chloroform.  Let  me  hold  your  hand.  Major,  or 
rather  you  hold  mine.  I  am  going  to  sleep,  but 
who  will  arouse  me  from  slumber  again  ?  I  hear 
a  band  playing  the  Dead  March,  and  the  drum's 
mufHed  roll.  It  is  my  General's  cortege  to  his 
lonely  grave.  I  feel  the  mystic  volatile's  sub- 
tilty creeping  through  my  veins.  Farewell,  Major; 


farewell,  world ;  and  my  native  land,  farewell; 
for  thee  I  " 

Yes:  Gen.  J is  dead,  and  buried  with  the 

honors  of  war,  by  generous  foemen.  lie  was 
respected  for  his  gallantry  on  that  fatal  field;  he 
was  esteemed  for  his  high  type  of  chivalry  and 
irreproachable  character  as  a  gentleman.  His 
desperate  mission  is  accomplished;  he  met  the 
expectations  of  his  chief  with  fidelity ;  obeyed 
his  orders  to  the  letter,  and  died  like  a  soldier. 
The  enemy's  advance  was  stayed  twenty-four 
hours.  Thus  Lynchburg  was  saved,  and  a  vital 
wound  warded  off  from  the  heart  of  the  slowly 
dying  Confederacy. 

Poor  Gen.  J 1  he  no  longer  bears  his  great 

and  silent  sorrow  over  the  earth;  no  more  will 
lie  appear  at  the  head  of  his  squadrons  on  his 
white  charger !  Let  us  hope  that  he  has  at  last 
reunited  with  his  long  lost  bride. 

Maj.  Brewer  died  on  the  field  of  battle. 

Upon  this  field  were  some  pitiful  scenes. 

A  number  of  old  men  and  boys  from  the  im- 
mediate vicinity  of  the  battle-ground  were  en- 
gaged in  the  terrible  conflict.  The  havoc  among 
them  was  fearful. 

Late  m  the  evening,  after  the  firing  had  ceased, 
and  the  shadows  began  to  spread  their  mantle 
over  the  ghastly  ground,  old  ladies,  young  ladies, 
and  little  children  were  on  the  field  seeking  their 
friends.  Often,  alas !  their  search  was  sadly  re- 
v?-arded.  Then  the  wails  of  despair  which  rose, 
to  drown  the  shrieks  of  the  wounded,  melted  the 
stony  hearts  of  veteran  foemen  to  tender  com- 
passion. 

There^  was  an  aged  mother  bending  over  her 
son ;  here,  was  a  wife,  with  her  babe  upon  her 
breast,  moaning  piteously  over  her  husband; 
yonder^  a  group  of  little  children  screaming  round 
the  rigid  form  of  their  father;  a  young  girl 
wringing  her  hands  in  voiceless  agony,  as  she 
crouched  beside  the  lifeless  form  of  her  brother : 
and  up  on  the  hill-side,  beneath  the  weeping- 
willow-tree,  a  faithful  dog  sat  beside  his  dead 
master  howhng  mournfully, — seemingly  the  only 
friend  of  the  deceased! 


120 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

T  H  E    T  H  R  E  E      VI C  T  t  M  S      OF      RETALIATION. 

"Tills  is  thy  curse  oh!  man,  thy  hard  decree! 
That  boundless  Upas— that  all  blasting  tree, 
Whose  roots  are  the  Earth — whose  leaves  and  branches  be 
The  skies  which  rain  their  plagues  on  men  like  dew; 
Disease,  death,  bondage — all  the  woes  we  see, — 
And,  worse,  the  woes  we  see  not  which  throb  through, 
The  immedicable  soul,  with  heart-aches  ever  new." 

— Byrox. 

April,  1865,  found  the  Confederacy  in  the  last 
throes  of  death.  But,  oh,  how  hard  she  struggled, 
how  slowly  she  died ! 

Through  to  the  last,  her  ragged,  starving  sol- 
diers maintained  their  dignified  and  lofty  bearing; 
displayed  their  intrepid  courage  and  indomitable 
will;  her  officers  retained  "the  pomp  and  cir- 
cumstance "  of  authority,  and  exercised  the  pre- 
rogatives of  a  hving  and  mighty  empire.  Even 
to  the  extreme  of  retaliation  were  their  war 
attributes  employed  in  the  same  degree  as  when 
their  cause  was  most  promising. 

Away  down  in  the  wilds  of  North  Carolina 
some  Federal  freebooters  ruthlessly  executed 
three  Confederate  officers,  in  the  early  days  of 
April. 

Two  or  tliree  days  later,  a  party  of  Federal 
officers  fell  into  the  hands  of  a  hot-headed  Con- 
federate general,  who  was  acting  almost  inde- 
pendently on  the  extreme  out-posts,  and  hovering 
on  the  advance  flank  of  the  Union  army. 

In  retahation  for  his  officers  who  had  been  exe- 
cuted, he  resolved  that  three  of  his  captives  should 
die. 

Concerning  such  matters  there  was  little  cere- 
mony in  border  semi-guerilla  warfare.  Usually 
the  victims  were  selected  by  lot,  condemned  and 
executed  all  in  a  few  moments.  Sometimes  they 
were  sent  near  or  into  the  enemy's  line,  in  order 
that  they  might  be  speedily  found,  to  inspire  the 
designed  terror,  or  prevent  a  repetition  of  the 
occasion  for  which  they  were  doomed. 

These  murders  were  most  generally  committed 
by  independent  commanders  of  small  forces,  with- 
out the  sanction  or  the  knowledge  even  of  their 
superiors,  to  whom  the  facts  were  seldom  or 
never  officially  reported. 


By  regular  commanders  in  the  field,  these 
atrocities  were  committed  rarely,  and  then  only 
in  extreme  cases  and  under  greatly  aggravated 
circumstances. 

We  have  occasion  now  to  portray  one  of  these 
pitiful  scenes,  conducted,  however,  with  more 
than  ordinary  decency  and  humanity,  if  we  may 
be  permitted  to  associate  these  names  with  such 
diabolical  brutality  and  savage  murder. 

The  scene  is  at  an  out-post  head-quarters  in  a 
rural  farm-house. 

Confederate  Ofi-icer:  Col.  Cloud,  there  are 
three  prisoners  outside,  under  charge  of  my  guard, 

sent  you  by  G-en.  R ,  with  this  dispatch,  which 

relates  to  them.  Please  relieve  me  of  them,  that 
I  may  rejoin  my  command  immediately." 

CoL.  C :  "ilaj.  H ,  go  with  him,  and 

receive  them ;  then  turn  them  over  to  the  officer 
of  the  guard." 

The  officers  retire  with  the  prisoners. 

"  What  can  this  all  mean,  sending  prisoners  to 
the  out-post?"  [Beads.] 

"•Head-quarters,  Department  of 

'"April,  1865. 
'"Special  Order  Xo.  369: 

" '  1st.  Col.  Garland  Cloud,  commanding  the 
cavalry,  will  cause  to  be  executed  at  daybreak 
of  the  8th  inst.,  just  beyond  his  extreme  out- 
post, in  retahation  for  the  three  officers  of  this 
command,  executed  on  the  4th  inst.,  the  follow- 
ing named  officers  of  the  United  States  Army, 
selected  by  lot,  this  day ;   to  wit : 

'"Lawrence  Pleasington.  Major U.  S.  Cavalry. 

"  'Milton  Land,  Captain  Co.  Gr ,  Illinois  '' 

"  '  Frank  Stone,  1st  Lieut.  Co.  K ■' 

"'2d.  He  will  leave  their  bodies  on  the  spot 
where  they  are  executed,  with  a  copy  of  this 
order  attached  to  each  body. 

"  '  3d.  Immediately  after  the  execution  he  will 
withdraw  his  pickets,  and  resume  the  line  of 
march  indicated  in  Special  Order  No.  364. 

'"By  Command  of  Brig.-Gen.  R- 

'"Sam.  M.  O'H , 

"  '  Maj.  A.  A.  A.  Gen. ' 

"Oh,  my  God!  that  poor  Pleasington  should 
be  one  of  them.      Poor,  miserable,  unfortunate 


THE  THREE  VICTIMS   OF  RETALIATION. 


121 


man !  Wretched  inim  that  I  am  to  have  this 
liorrible  order  to  execute.  I  would  rather  desert 
to  the  enemy  than  obey  it." 

The  officer  returns. 

Maj.  H :  "  Col.  Cloud,  one  of  the  prisoners 

•begs  to  see  you.  Oh,  Colonel,  it  is  pitiful,  heart- 
rending to  witness  them !  " 

CoL.  C :  "  Sunnnons  all  the  officers  imme- 
diately, Major." 

Maj.  H :   "They  wiU  all  be  here  in  a  few 

moments." 

Other  officers  enter. 

Col.  C :    "Gentlemen:     There    are   three 

United  States  officers  hete  under  my  charge.  I 
am  ordered  to  execute  them  at  day-break.  This 
is  terrible.  The  war  cannot  last  thirty  days  longer. 
Talk  it  over,  and  I  will  join  you  again  in  ten 
minutes." 

Col.  Cloud  passes  out,  but  soon  reenters  the 
room. 

Maj.  H :   "  Colonel,  the  unanimous  opinion 

is  that  you  would  be  justified,  under  the  circum- 
stances, and  by  the  noble  cause  of  humanity,  in 
permitting  them  to  escape  to-night." 

CoL.  C — — :  "Gentlemen:  Our  sentiments 
and  our  feelings  are  in  accord,  but  our  positions 
are  not,-  the  cruel  order  is  to  me,  not  to  you. 
Who  among  you  will  volunteer  to  be  officer  of 
the  guard,  and  assume  the  responsibility  of  ac- 
counting for  those  prisoners,  merely  relieving 
the  officer  now  on  duty  and  receiving  your  in- 
structions from  him?  I  observe  you  are  all 
silent.  This  is  conclusive  as  to  what  you  would 
do  were  either  one  of  you  in  my  place.  This  is 
all  I  desired  to  learn.  The  order  must  be  ol^eyed. 
You  are  dismissed,  gentlemen." 

The  officers  especially  called  go  out. 

"Major,  have  the  guards  trebled,  and  rigid  in- 
structions given  to  each  man.  Then  bring  me 
Lieut.  Stone.  Say  to  the  other  two  that  I  shall 
see  them  one  at  a  time,  and  render  them  every 
facility  and  assistance  in  my  power,  in  preparing 
for  their  sad  fate,  and-  in  communicating  with 
their  friends.  I  shall  devote  every  moment  of 
the  night  to  them." 

The  officer  goes  out,  and  reenters  with  a  pris- 
oner and  guards. 


Maj.  H :   "  Here  is  Lieut.  Stone,  Colonel, 

as  directed." 

Col.    C :     "Take   a   seat    for   a  moment, 

please. 

"Now,  Major,  ride  over  to  G ,  and  tell  Col. 

T 's  chaplain  that  he  must  come   here  and 

spend  the  night  in  administering  the  Divine  con- 
solations of  his  licuveuly  mission.  Explain  to 
him." 

The  officer  goes  out,  leaving  prisoner  and 
guards. 

"Lieutenant,  my  poor  fellow-man,  what  can 
I  say  to  you  or  offisr  to  do  for  you  that  will  not 
appear  hollow  mockery  ?  " 

Lieut.  S :  "Oh,  Colonel!     My  poor  wife 

and  httle  babes !  It  is  of  them  that  I  am  thinking ! 
My  last  whisper  will  lisp  their  names ;  my  last 
breath  will  go  out  a  sigh  for  them.  You  are  kind 
to  send  for  a  minister.  The  Major  told  me  that 
you  said  I  could  write.  I  do  not  blame  you. 
Colonel.  I  saw  the  three  poor  men  for  whom 
we  must  die  going  out  to  their  death.  We  depre- 
cated the  inhuman  act.  How  I  felt  for  them. 
Now  I  know  how  they  felt." 

Col.  C :  "  Yes,  Lieutenant,  you  can  write 

all  you  Avish.  I  will  send  everything  you  all 
desire,  by  a  truce,  into  your  lines,  early  in  the 
morning.  Just  step  into  the  next  room.  There 
is  everything — candle,  writing  material,  table,  and ' 
all  that  you  need  for  writing.  When  you  finish 
your  letter,  you  can  go  at  once  into  another 
room  and  see  the  chaplain.  You  shall  not  be 
disturbed." 

Lieut.  S :  "  Thank  you.  Colonel.     This  is 

more  than  I  expected." 

CoL.  C :   "Corporal,  go  and  tell  the  officer 

of  the  guard  to  send  me  Capt.  Land ;  and  also  to 
tell  Maj.  Pleasington  that  I  will  send  for  him  in 
about  thirty  minutes." 

The  guards  go  out  with  their  prisoner,  but  soon 
reenter  with  another  captive. 

Capt.  Land:  "Oh!  Col.  Garland  Cloud,  cousin 
to  my  poor  Emma,  it  is  you,  the  little  prattling 
boy  Avho  clung  to  my  neck  and  wept  so  bitterly 
when  we  started  for  Illinois,  that  is  to  make  her  a 
widow,  and  her  sweet  innocent  little  babes  — 
orphans !  Oh,  Garland !  if  she  could  only  look 
upon  your  stern,  pale  face  now,  with  her  grand, 


122 


MYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


sweet  blue  ej'e.-;,  her  lilooil  would  run  into  icy  con- 
gealment.  How  often  she  lias  written  to  nie : 
'Milton,  if  you  are  captured,  try  to  fall  into 
cousin  Garland's,  or  uncle  Cloud's  hands:  they 
will  treat  you  well,  the  kind,  noble,  good  hearts! ' 
I  have  complied  with  her  request." 

Col.  C :  "  Oh,  alas !  Milton,  my  poor  cousin, 

that  I  should  have  lived  to  see  this  day.  I  would, 
under  any  other  circumstance,  put  my  own  Mfe 
into  the  breach  to  save  you.  I  am  in  no  way 
responsiljle  for  your  present  terrible  fate,  and  I 
am  powerless.  I  cannot  help  you  further  than  to 
furnish  you  a  minister,  and  to  allow  you  time  to 
make  all  dispositions,  in  writing,  that  you  desire, 
which  I  will  send  into  your  lines  by  sun-rise  in 
the  morning.  Nerve  yourself.  At  day-break,  my 
poor  cousin,  must  this  inhuman  decree  be  executed. 
You  have  little  time  to  waste  in  lamenting  your 
fate  to  me.  Pass  through  that  door.  You  will 
find  Lieut.  Stone  in  the  room  waiting,  and  a 
table  and  writing  material  for  you.  Now,  cor- 
poral, I  am  ready  for  Maj.  Pleasington." 

Capt.  Land:  "  Oh,  Garland!  how  can  I  break 
this  cruel  news  to  her  ?  " 

Guards  depart  with  Capt.  Land,  but  return 
with  Maj.  Pleasington. 

Col.  Cloud:  "Oh,  Maj.  Pleasington,  has  it 
come  to  this  ?  Is  all  the  kindness  and  consideration 
we  have  bestowed  upon  each  other  to  terminate 
thus  ?  Why  did  you  not  let  me  die  when  I  was 
at  death's  door  with  my  lost  arm  ?  But  for  you, 
in  another  hour  I  would  have  quietly  passed 
away;  and  now,  with  what  a  horrible  reward  I 
must  repay  you !" 

Maj.  P :  "Calm  your  emotion.  Colonel.    I 

am  an  educated  soldier.  This  is  a  hazard  of  war, 
thai  has  fallen  to  my  lot.  It  is  but  just.  It  was 
no  more  nor  less  than  a  shameful  murder,  execut- 
ing the  three  officers  for  whom  we  three  victims 
must  suffer.  I  Avill  die  like  a  soldier.  I  do  not 
blame  you,  Colonel.  I  know  you  would  be  the 
last  man  in  the  world  to  put  me  into  this  jeop- 
ardy if  you  could  help  it.  I  understand  your 
position.  Since  I  am  destined  for  this  wretched 
doom,  I  am  thankful  that  I  have  your  sympathy 
to  comfort  me  in  my  last  sad  hour,  and  your 
kindness  to  permit  me  to  communicate  with  those 


the  vej-y  thought  of  whom  wring.'^  my  miserable 
heart." 

Col.  C :  "In  that  room,  Major,  there  are 

table  and  writing  material.  When  you  are 
through  writing,  there  is  a  chaplain  ready  to 
commune  and  pray  with  you.  My  order  does 
not  specify  the  mode  of  execution :  hence,  I  have 
determined  to  make  it  the  regulation-file  of  sol- 
diers ;  and  they  will  fire  from  their  saddles  but  one 
volley,  at  day-break  to-morrow  morning,  just 
beyond  our  lines.  There  is  one  chance  perhaps 
in  ten  thousand  that  all  three  may  not  be  in- 
stantly dispatched.  Were  I  in  that  situation  and 
condition,  I  knoAV  what  course  I  should  pur- 
sue. Our  pickets  will  retire  immediately  after 
this  volley  is  fired;  and  in  a  few  moments  the 
bodies  will  be  in  the  hands  of  your  people.  Now, 
go  in  and  write  your  cruel  letters." 

Maj.  P :   "I  understand  you.    Thank  you. 

Colonel." 

Guards  go  out  with  Maj.  Pleasington.  The  officer 
returns. 

Col.    C :  "Now,  Maj.    H ,    cause   the 

commandants  of  each  battalion  to  draw  lots,  to 
determine  which  one  shall  furnish  thirty-six 
men  and  three  commissioned  officers  to  execute 
this  fearful  order.  This  decided,  command  the 
officers  to  draw  lots,  to  find  which  three  must  go ; 
and  then,  again,  the  men  must  draw,  in  order  to 
ascertain  the  thirty-six  who  must  become  the 
cruel  files  of  fatal  execution.  All  this  com- 
pleted, arm  the  men  with  Mississii^pi  rifles ;  march 
them  quietly  into  the  dining-room ;  have  them 
stack  their  ai-ms,  and  then  march  them  back  to  their 
bivouacs,  and  let  them  sleep.  During  the  night 
the  guns  will  be  loaded.  I  am  going  to  separate 
the  poor  victims,  and  send  one  out  on  each 
public  road. 

"Ask,  also,  Major,  for  alwut  a  dozen  volunteer 
singers,  to  sing  a  hymn  at  the  last  closing  sacred 
service,  immediately  after  the  conclusion  of 
which  the  sad  and  mournful  corteges  will  move 
off  for  the  places  of  their  bloody,  murderous 
destinations." 

It  is  the  silent  hour  of  three  o'clock  in  the 
morning ;  the  camp  fires  have  flickered  low  or 
gone  out ;  even  the  horses  are  asleep.  The  pine 
forest  of  North  CaroHna  siglis  and  moans  plain- 


THE  THREE  VICTIMS  OF  RETALIATION. 


123 


lively  as  it.s  bi-anches  are  gently  fanncil  1)}^  tlie 
Api'il-night  wind.  A  spectral  crescent  moon 
swings  low  in  the  Eastern  sky,  casting  its  faint, 
slanting  rays  into  the  deep  gloom  of  the  dismal 
pine-woods,  creating  a  weird  and  unearthly  ap- 
pearance. In  the  midst  of  all  this  there  is  a 
large,  old  frame  dwelling,  tenanted  by  two  old 
bachelors.  The  parlor-room  is  unoccupied  and 
bare  save  the  thick  meshes  of  spider-webs  with 
which  the  large  high  ceiling  is  covered.  In  one 
end  of  this  deserted,  neglected,  dirty,  and  cheer- 
less abode  there  is  to-night  a  small  table,  upon 
which  burns  a  small  feeble  tallow-candle,  whose 
slight  radiance  does  not  illuminate  one-tenth  part 
of  the  gloomy  apartment.  Fit  stage  and  scenery 
for  the  dread,  solemn,  heart-rending  scene  so 
cruelly  being  enacted  upon  it! 

Behind  the  table  stands  the  ghostly  figure  of 
the  man  of  God,  clad  in  the  official  sacerdotal 
robes  of  the  Episcopal  Church.  In  front  of  him, 
their  heads  vesting  against  the  little  table,  their 
knees  upon  the  dirty,  moldy  floor,  are  the 
kneeling,  grief-smitten,  heart-broken,  earth-hope- 
less forms,  of  three  officers  of  the  ITnited  States 
army,  engaged  in  supplicating  the  Throne  of 
Mercy,  the  last  refuge  to  which  ever  instinct- 
ively turn  the  truly  miserable,  and  the  utterly 
despairing  hearts,  when  the  helping  or  the  saving 
fi-iendly  hand  of  earth  is  out  of  reach  forever- 
more.  Dreadful  to  contemplate! — three  brave 
men,  whose  cheeks  would  not  blanch  beneath 
the  impi-egnable  battlement's  angry  frown  of 
death,  guilty  of  no  crime,  and  in  the  full  vigor  of 
health  and  of  manhood,  participating  in  their 
own  funereal  ceremonies.  They  are  about  to  re- 
ceive'thelast  Communion — the  most  blessed  con- 
solation the  Church  can  bestow. 

Behind  this  group,  around  which  hovers  a 
halo  of  such  awe-inspiring  shadows :  the  man  of 
God  and  the  Death  Angel — the  one  barely  visible, 
the  terrible  oppressive  feeling  that  the  other  is 
equally  near  and  real  unmistakably  perceptible — 
Icneel  about  tv^-enty  grim-faced  soldiers  of  the 
Southern  army.  Behind  these,  in  the  thick 
gloom,  kneels  the  towering  form  of  Col.  Cloud, 
convulsed  with  emotion,  and  sobbing  as  if  his 
heart  would  break.  One  by  one  he  has  already 
taken   final  leave   of    the   unhappy  men  whose 


lamps  of  .sweet  and  hope-dawning  life  he  has 
been  ordered  to  extinguish;  he  does  not  wish 
them  to  see  his  face  again. 

Slowly,  in  a  mournful,  tremulous  voice,  the 
man  of  God  pronounces  the  lines  of  a  closing- 
dirge,  "Nearer,  my  God,  to  Thee;"  and  the  sol- 
diers with  much  difficulty,  because  of  the  choking 
emotions,  which  they  cannot  stifle,  sing  in  cad- 
ences, .slow,  plaintive,  and  direful : — 

"  Now,  like  a  wanderer — 
Daylight  all  gone, 
Darkness  comes  over  me— 

My  rest  a  stone: 
Yet  in  my  tlreams  I'll  be 
Nearer,  my  God,  to  Thee— nearer  to  Thee." 

Then  the  good  man  commends  their  souls  to 
God,  and  one  by  one  bids  the  wretched,  hope- 
less men  an  affecting  farewell,  as  they  are  led 
away  and  delivered  up  to  the  cruel  ministers  of 
dljath.  Then  for  a  few  moments  more  he  re- 
mains alone  in  silent  solitary  prayer.  Now,with 
the  spectral  candle  in  his  hand,  he  passes  out  of 
the  terrible  room,  almost  frightened  at  the  hol- 
low, lugubrious  echoes  of  his  own  foot-steps, 
closes  the  door  behind  him,  and  listens  on  the 
portico,with  folded  arms,  to  the  receding  sounds' 
of  the  horses'  hoofs  of  the  three  merciless  parties. 
Thus  he  continues  standing,  until  almost  simul- 
taneously three  volleys  of  musketry  ring  through 
the  still,  dewy  air :  then  he  exclaims:  '■^  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  receive  their  souls/" 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

THE    LAST    SCENE    OF    THE    TENTED    FIELD. 

"Desperately  his  soldiers  still  fight  on. 
Determined  to  die  or  yet  be  free. 
Unconscious  ot  wha*t  their  general's  done 

Beneath  that  budding  apple-tree. 
But,  look  !  a  courier  is  hastening  on 

To  still  the  cannon's  deafening  roar. 
While  silently  they  stack  their  arms 
To  fight  on  Virginia's  soil  no  more." 

From  Lee's  Sukeendek. 

After  a  halt  of  nine  months  in  front  of  Peters- 
burg, Gen.  Lee  again  resumes  his  retreat  from 
"  The  Field  of  Gettysburg,"  leaving  behind  him 
a  wake  of  devastation  and  death  rai-ely  surj: 
in  history,  seldom  equalled. 


124 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GKEY. 


From  this  ghastly  buryiug-ground  he  moves 
away  in  the  direction  of  the  South-west,  facing 
the  red  glow  of  the  setting  sun,  with  his  back  to 
a  redder  scene  of  blood,  which  deluged  the  earth 
in  his  last  futile  struggle  to  repel  the  onslaught 
which  broke  his  puny  lines  and  forced  him  to 
evacuate  his  long  and  well  defended  Avorks. 

Thus  reduced  to  the  mere  skeleton  of  an  army, 
ragged,  bare-headed,  bare-footed,  and  famishing, 
he  takes  up  his  line  of  march  through  an  open 
country,  after  an  overwhelming  defeat,  in  the 
face  of  a  victorious,  well-clothed,  well-fed,  well- 
equipped  enemy  that  nearly  twenty  times  out- 
number him.  Matchless  chieftain !  devoted  fol- 
lowers !  thus  to  move  after  every  ray  of  hope  is 
vanished. 

But  in  this  there  was  method  and  policy. 
Well  did  Gen.  Lee  know  that  all  was  over ;  still 
he  wished  to  escape  the  humiliation  of  surrender- 
ing at  discretion  the  brave  remnant  of  his  once 
proud  and  mighty  army.  Well  did  he  reahze 
that  this  feeble  band  could  inspire  respect  amid 
the  victorious  and  exultant  ranks  of  the  enemy ; 
that  before  its  wasting  yet  serried  phalanx  the 
multitudinous  hosts  would  pause  and  stand  at  bay. 

But  still,  however,  above  all  these  considera- 
tions was  that  supreme  incentive  which  swayed 
and  convulsed  his  noble  nature  with  intensified 
emotion:  that  of  securing  for  his  desolate  and 
mourning  country  an  honorable  and  a  tolerable 
peace. 

Inspired  bj'^  these  powerful  and  laudable  mo- 
tives, which  shed  about  his  name  a  ray  of  glory 
that  reflects  more  lustre  upon  the  grandeur  of 
his  fame  than  his  most  masterful  feats  of  arms, 
he  marches  to  gain  the  fastnesses  of  the  great 
blue  mountains,  many  miles  away. 

After  some  days  of  weary  marching,  at  last, 
sometimes  wrapped  in  gauzy  veils  of  misty  haze, 
the  dim  outlines  of  the  great  and  cloud-kissed 
peaks  are  descried,  seeming  to  beckon  their  dis- 
tressed sons  to  hasten  on  to  their  protecting 
friends;  for  such  these  grand  old  mountains  had 
oftentimes  proved  to  the  sons  of  Virginia  and 
the  South. 

But  these  friendly  guardians  were,  like  the  in- 
viting refuge  of  the  distant  headland  promontory 
to  the  perishing  mariner,  surrounded  by  engulf- 


ing waves.  He  sees  safety  in  the  dim  distance  ; 
but,  sadder  than  none,  it  is  safety  he  may  not 
reach.  Thus  was  it  with  the  imperiled  band  of 
Gen.  Lee.  At  length  it  found  itself  emcom- 
passed  by  the  engulfing  surge  of  blue  waves; 
and  thus  it  was  forced  to  stand  at  bay. 

The  stage  for  the  last  scene  was  destined  to 
render  one  of  the  most  obscure  county  seats  in 
the  old  Dominion  forever  famous — "  The  Appom- 
attox" of  endless  historical  renown. 

This  quaint  old  town  contains  a  little  dingy 
brick  court-house,  in  a  diminutive  square,  sur- 
rounded by  a  lew  shabby  store  and  shop  build- 
ings,— thus  does  it  appear  in  the  early  days  of 
April,  1865,  when  Gen.  Lee  halts,  plants  his  guns, 
and  forms  in  battle  array  upon  this  sequestered 
spot,  where  the  once  proud  and  invincible  army 
of  Northern  Virginia  atacks  its  nine  thousand 
muskets  forever. 

It  is  somewhat  painful  to  take  issue  with  the 
grave  historian  on  one  feature  of  this  scene, — that 
of  the  famous  apple-tree,  under  which  Gens. 
Lee  and  Grant  are  reputed  first  to  have  met — and 
to  assure  the  reader  that  this  is  an  errone9us  im- 
pression ;  that  the  two  great  captains  never  met 
under  "  that  budding  apple-tree."  That  story  is 
pure  fiction. 

But  Gen.  Lee  and  some  of  his  heutenants 
meet  under  this  gnarled  apple-tree,  just  beginning 
to  bud,  and  hold  a  short  council  of  war,  at 
which  it  is  decided  to  surrender.  This  is  on  the 
morning  of  the  8th  of  April,  1865.  From  this 
spot  starts  the  ever  memorable  flag  of  truce  to 
the  Federal  army. 

A  little  later  the  commanders  of  the  two  armies 
meet  in  an  open  field,  converse  less  than  ten 
minutes,  and  then  ride  back  to  their  quarters. 
This  is  their  first  meeting. 

About  noon  they  meet  again ;  this  time  in  a 
room  of  Maj.  McLane's  house,  definitely  to  ter- 
minate the  tragedy  in  which  ihey  have  been  so 
long  engaged. 

The  terms  accorded  to  Gen.  Lee  in  the  articles 
of  capitulation  here  consummated  are  magnani- 
mous to  a  degree  that  reflects  undying  credit  on 
Gen.  Grant,  and  will  ever  glow  on  "  the  pictured 
page"  of  history,  should  the  lustre  of  his  military 
renown  ever  wane. 


THE  LAST   SCENE  OF  THE  TENTED  FIELD. 


125 


Nothing  was  more  certain  than  that  Gen.  Lee 
could  be  forced  to  surrender,  and  in  a  short  time, 
at  discretion. 

But  behold  the  respect  in  which  his  triumphant 
foeman  holds  him!  No  disposition  is  manifested 
that  a  desire  even  is  entertained  to  humiliate  the 
vanquished  chieftain  of  the  South,  nor  to  com- 
promise his  common  soldiers  by  imposing  the 
hard  conditions  of  surrender  that  might  be  ex- 
acted and  enforced. 

When  these  honorable  and  favorable  condi- 
tions were  secured,  what  a  weight  of  anxiety 
must  have  been  lifted  from  Gen.  Lee's  agonized 
mind.  For  what  haunting  probabilities  of  the  woe 
this  supreme  crisis  might  develop,  must  have 
oppressed  him  since  the  failure  of  Pickett  on 
Cemetery  Hill! 

He  knew  that  it  was  merely  a  question  of 
time ;  that  sooner  or  later  he  was  doomed  to  be 
vanquished. 

The  day  after  the  terms  of  surrender  were 
signed,  the  disconsolate  Confederates  part  with 
their  rifles,  lay  aside  their  trusty  companions, 
and  bid  farewell  to  their  commander,  Avhom  they 
love  so  well. 

At  this  moment,  strong  men  weep  like  little 
children. 

"You   did  your   part    well  little  band; 

Outnumbered,  yet  braveand  true  you  stood, 
Ever  battling  for  the  land 

Of  the  brave,  the  noble,  and  the  good. 
Farewell,  Southern  fallen  braves: 

We  thy  loss  most  deeply  feel; 
We'll  strew  flowers  o'er  your  graves: 

Yearly  at  your  tombs  we'll  kneel." 

The  only  object  which  the  South  had  any  hope  | 
to  gain,  that  for  which  she  has  struggled  since  | 
the  fatal  field  of  Gettysburg,  is  attained:  an  honor-  I 
able  peace  and  protection.  \ 

The  Star  of  the  Confederacy  has  set  forever ;    j 
the  Star  of  the  Union  has  risen  re-illuminated  to 
set  Nevermore  ! 

Three  friends  who  have  been  continually 
together,  in  their  laborious  duties  and  painful 
dangers,  from  the  first  day  at  the  Wilderness 
until  this  scene,  which  is  their  last,  are  seated 
once  more  by  their  bivouac  fire,  after  returning 
from  their  farewell  visit  to  Gen.  Lee. 

Gex.  Cloud:   "Well  boys,  the  end   has  come 


at  last;  all  our  precious  blood  has  been  shed  in 
vain." 

Col.  Flowers:  "Yes,  General;  but  man  pro- 
poses and  God  disposes ;  and  so  let  us  try  to  be 
resigned,  and  to  believe  that  it  is  all  for  the 
best." 

Maj.  Harman-  "I  guess  the  Colonel  has  got 
the  true  philosophy  on  us  this  time  General." 

Gex.  Cloud: "Yes,  it  is  better  to  accommodate 
ourselves  to  the  circumstances  than  to  allow 
them  to  accommodate  themselves  to  us ;  which 
they  would  certainly  do. 

"I  have  been  counting  up,  as  we  rode  back 
from  Gen.  Lee's  quarters,  how  many  of  our  three 
original  companies  will  stack  their  arms.  There 
are  but  seven  of  them  now  present  with  guns, 
and  four  company  officers — fourteen  of  us  alto- 
gether, out  of  three  hundred  and  sixty,  who 
were  mustered  into  the  service  at  the  commence- 
ment of  the  war;  not  less  than  three  hundred  of 
them  are  dead,  and  about  forty  of  the  remainder 
have  been  wounded." 

Col.  Flowers.  "I  wish  Col.  Garland  was 
here  to  go  home  with  us." 

Gen.  Cloud  :  "  Ah !  poor  boy !  poor  Garl.  It 
will  be  many  a  weary  day  before  ever  he  sees 
home.  God  only  knows  what  will  become  of 
him.  The  Tennessee  bushwhackers,  against 
whom  he  operated,  have  sworn  vengeance 
against  him.  He  dares  not  return  home;  and  be 
does  not  know  where  to  go  nor  what  to  do 
until  the  reign  of  terror,  which  we  are  destined 
to  have,  is  over.  He  writes  to  me  that  he  has 
some  idea  of  plunging  into  the  North;  but  he 
has  no  money,  and  his  arm  is  gone:  so  he  cannot 
earn  a  subsistence  at  hard  labor.  That  miserable 
Dutchman,  Mueller,  an  inveterate  enemy  of  his. 
is  affiliating  with  those  murderous  desperadoes, 
and  will  inform  them  where  he  is,  should  he 
return  honie  or  to  any  point  within  a  long  dis- 
tance of  home.  He  is  now  somewhere  on  the 
coast  of  North  CaroHna.  It  was  cruel  to  put 
him  into  active  field  service  after  he  was  so 
badly  maimed.  He  has  done  much  hard  fighting 
since,  and  but  little  scouting  duty.  He  appeared 
only  in  the  light  of  simply  obeying  orders, 
and  took  no  other  interest  in  the  services  he 
rendered." 


126 


MYSTIC   ROMANCES   OF   THE  BLUE  AND   THE   GEET. 


Maj.  Harman:  "None  of  us  has  met  him  since 
his  promotion." 

Gen.  Cloud;  "I  have  not  since  the  night  of 
Gettysburg." 

Col.  Flowers:  "What  can  Mueller  have 
against  Col.  Garland?  He  was  a  Confederate 
officer,  and  loud-mouthed  for  the  wai-." 

Gen.  Cloud:  " He  was  a  coward.  Somewhere 
in  the  Tennessee  campaigns  he  was  abandoning 
his  post  in  the  line,  at  a  critical  moment;  and 
Garl  rallied  the  men  and  re-posted  them;  caught 
Mueller  by  the  collar,  and  at  the  same  time, 
brandishing  his  sword,  roughly  rebuked  him  for 
his  cowardice. 

"  During  the  same  campaign  he  gave  a  lot  of 
his  men  leave  to  go  home;  and  Garl  picked 
them  up  the  first  day  out  from  camp,  and  re- 
turned them  to  their  command. 

"  This   greatly  increased  M 's  indignation, 

besides  making  enemies  of  all  the  men,  who  have 
sworn  vengeance. 

"  Even  now  there  are  numerous  political  secret 
societies,  known  ostensibly  as  Red  Strings,  etc., 
but  really  Union  Leagues,  all  over  our  country, 
having  for  their  principles  the  division  of  all  the 
landed  property  among  themselves.  All  the 
deserters  have  already  joined  them.  Many  of 
the  soldiers  will  join  them.  Demoralization, 
discord,  and  every  species  of  confused  anarchy 
Avill  distract  our  country  until  we  get  some 
established  government  in  the  States;  and  wnth 
the  railroads  destroj'ed,  and  no  mail  service  in 
operation,  this  will  take  a  long  time." 

Col.  Flowers:  "It  is  sad  to  return  home  to 
find  this  state  of  afTairs.  I  will  huxe  been 
absent  four  years  in  a  few  more  days.  Poor 
Garland,  my  best  friend,  how  I  pity  him!" 

Maj.  Harman  "And  then  to  know  that  we 
cannot  help  him,  nor  even  hear  from  him, 
renders  his  case  still  more  deplorable." 

Gen.  Cloud:  ''It  is  another  one  of  his  war 
curses.  From  the  very  first  he  has  averred  that 
he  would  never  see  another  happy  day  on  the 
earth ;  and  it  now  begins  to  appear  as  if  he  was 
right.      Except   his    most    devoted   friend,  poor 

Gen.  J ,  from  all  that  I  can  learn,  he  was  one 

of  the  saddest  soldiers  in  the  army.  At  Gettys- 
burg he  pictured  to  me  his  gloomy  forebodings. 


both   for  the  country  and  for  himself.     I  much 
fear  his  predictions  are  to  be  fulfilled." 

Steadily  the  martial  hosts  vanish;  directly  they 
have  all  disappeared,  leaving  the  hitherto  un- 
known village  to  resume  the  monotonous  tenor 
of  its  way;  nothing  save  the  ashes  of  their  camp- 
fires  remain  to  indicate  tliat  legions  haA-e  lately 
thronged  these  sterile  hills.      The  war  is  ended 


CHAPTER  XXX. 

MOUNTJOY    HOUSE    IN    THE    STORM-CLOUD. 

"  The  tree  will  wither  long  before  it  fall. 
The  hull  drives  on  though  masts  and  sails  be  torn; 
The  roof-tree  sinks,  but  moulders  on  the  hall. 
In  massy  hoariness ;  the  ruined  waU, 
Stands  when  Its  wind-worn  battlements  are  gone ; 
The  bars  -iurvive  the  captive  they  enthrall. 
The  day  drags  through  though  storms  shut  out  the 
sun."  — Byeon. 

Norman  Mount  joy:  "My  dear  Helen,  for 
months  have  I  struggled  to  spare  you  the  cruel 
stroke  which  it  becomes  my  bitter  and  painful 
duty  now  to  inflict,  rather  than  suffer  you  to  go 
on  day  after  day  as  I  have  gone,  hoping  even 
against  hope,  until  it  smites  you  all  at  once  with 
a  thousand  public-envenomed  darts.  I  can  no 
longer  supply  the  means  to  support  our  princely 
extravagance.  I  am  a  ruined  man,  with  inevi- 
table bankruptcy  and  disgrace  staring  me  in  the 
face,  if  it  continues  one  month  longer. 

"  For  many  years  our  expenditures  have  been 
frightful;  for  months  and  months  they  have 
averaged  $10,000  per  month.  The  loss  of  our 
Southern  trade,  and  the  money  there  due  us,  and 
of  the  several  valuable  cargoes  captured  by 
the  Southern  privateers,  have  sadly  impaired  the 
capital  of  the  firm — so  much  so  that  even  in  the 
business  itself  it  has  become  necessary  to  re- 
trench in  every  possible  way.  The  plain,  unvar- 
nished truth  is,  that  our  excessive  expenditures 
have  absolutely  absorbed  every  dollar  of  my  cap- 
ital that  should  have  been  left  in  the  business. 
Truly,  I  am  now  in  the  firm  on  sufferance  only. 
At  a  meeting  to-day  it  w-as  agreed  that  I  might 
draw  $10,000  per  annum  for  my  family  expenses. 
Such  are  the  lamentable  facts  and  the  true  state 
of  the  circumstance  to  which  we  are  under  the 


MOUNTJOY  HOUSE  IN  THE  STORM-CLOUD. 


127 


unavoidable  necessity  of  accommodating  our- 
selves. I  trust  you  will  do  this  with  that  chur- 
acteristic  tact  and  skillfulness  for  which  you  are 
so  famous.'' 

Mrs.  Mountjoy  :  "  Norman  Mountjoy,  do  I 
dream,  or  am  I  listening  to  the  sound  of  your 
real  voice,  and  looking  into  your  face  with  my 
open  eyes?  Do  you  tell  me  this  worse  than 
ghostly  story,  on  the  very  even  as  it  were  of 
our  daughter's  nuptial  ceremonies  ?  How  am  I 
to  get  along?  It  will  take  more  than  your  paltry 
year's  allowance  to  supply  the  bridal  robes,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  presents,  the  party,  and  the 
supper. 

"I  know  you  can  borrow  money.  You  have 
plenty  of  friends  who  will  either  loan  you  the 
funds  or  indorse  your  note  for  a  sum  sufficient 
to  consummate  the  dream  of  my  life.  I  cannot 
think  of  relinquishing  this,  although  I  know  that 
I  am  on  a  sinking  ship,  without  reahzing  all  that 
it  implies.  But  we  must  by  all  means,  at  any 
hazard,  buoy  up  and  keep  afloat  until  we  get  the 
girls  into  the  haven,  let  come  to  us  whatever  may 
after  this  is  done.  The  money  to  do  this  I  must 
and  will  have." 

Mr.  Mountjoy:  "Helen,  is  it  possible  that  I 
have  never  known  you  in  all  these  years  of  our 
smoothly  gliding  journey  of  life  ?  I  have  never 
yet  denied  your  shghtest  wish  nor  your  most 
axtravagant  demand.  Unmurmuringly  have  I 
supplied  them  with  a  lavishingly  open  hand,  until 
noAV  I  have  nothing  left  but  my  unsuiiied  and 
sacred  honor,  which,  too,  you  eagerly  demand. 

"  Yes,  there  are  hundreds  of  men  who  would 
loan  me  any  amount  of  money  within  the 
liounds  of  reason,  unquestioned.  Why?  Simply 
because  they  consider  my  name  gilt  edge;  they 
would  not  know  my  true  condition.  As  a  man 
of  honor,  it  would  be  my  bounden  duty  fully  to 
inform  any  friend  to  whom  I  might  apply,  just 
how  I  am  situated ;  then  very  few,  if  any  one  of 
them,  would  aid  me.  I  shall  not  apply  to  any  of 
them  :  hence  there  will  be  no  cause  for  dissem- 
bling nor  occasion  for  explanations." 

Mrs.  Mountjoy:  '"Then  you  flatly  refuse  to 
assist  me?  Fie  on  your  sentimental  compunc- 
tions, when  there  is  so  much  at  stake. 

"  After  the  girls  are  married,  we  could  procure 


the  money  among  thrni  to  cancel  the  obligations 
contracted  in  assisting  to  complete  their  happi- 
ness and  secure  their  independence  for  life ;  and 
even  if  we  failed  to  do  this,  the  end  to  be  attained 
abundantly  justifies  the  means  that  it  appears 
necessary  to  employ  in  order  to  succeed. 

"  The  failure  to  make  the  anticipated  occasion 
one  equal  to  expectation  will  be  prima  facias  evi- 
dence to  the  world  that  we  are  under  a  mys- 
terious cloud.  This  may  blast  the  pi-ospects  of 
our  children,  and  make  us  appear  as  the  leading 
characters  in  a  disgraceful  scene  of  a  consummate 
force." 

Mr.  Mountjoy:  "Helen,  all  these  things  have 
had  my  serious  consideration. 

"  It  is  an  infallible  principle  in  the  divine  law 
of  human  nature  that  he  who  does  wrong  is  ad- 
monished, before  and  during  the  act,  by  the  dic- 
tates of  conscience.  It  is  often  as  criminal  to 
conceal  the  truth  as  to  steal.  Where  pecuniary 
interests  are  involved  between  man  and  man,  he 
Avho  deceives  him  wlio  assumes  the  risk,  by  false 
representations  or  appearances,  is  a  criminal.  This 
law  is  clearly  and  unmistakably  expounded,  and 
is  thus  interpreted  by  all  true  and  unbiased 
minus. 

"For  any  loss  or  damage  thereby  entailed, 
morally,  the  responsibihty  is  more  terrible  than 
A\ould  be  that  of  the  professional  depredatoi- 
who  had  taken  a  similar  amount,  or  inflicted  a 
like  injury  with  violent  hands.  The  breach  of 
confidence  in  the  former  instance,  added  to  the 
milder  and  more  genteel  yet  by  no  means  less 
dangerous  system  of  theft  and  robbery,  can  but 
enhance  the  enormity  of  the  crime  far  beyond 
that  of  the  latter,  who  makes  the  rude,  uncere- 
monious despoiling .  of  maiakind  a  life  business. 
Against  him  all  the  world  is  on  guard:  he  is 
watched  and  suspected. 

"It  is,  therefore,  unpardonable  dishonesty  to 
contract  any  obligation,  with  a  reasonable  moral 
certainty  that  it  can  never  be  Hquidated.  No 
matter  if  not  one  word  is  uttered  on  the  subject, 
the  silence  implies  a  tacit  admission  that  all  is 
right — yes,  and  more:  it  is,  with  the  interest 
being  put  in  jeopardy,  a  declaration ;  because  of 
the  abiding  faith  in  the  culprit's  moral  honesty 
that  if  all  is  not  right,  the  nidulo-ence  would  not 


128 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


be  accepted.  This  is  a  predicament  in  wliich  I 
will  never  place  myself.  I  love  my  children,  and 
suffer  unmitigated  torture  to  be  under  the  neces- 
sity of  causing  them  pain  or  disappointment. 
But,  Helen,  if  I  had  twice  as  many  loved  ones, 
twice  and  thrice  as  dear  to  me  as  those  I  now 
have,  I  would  not  stoop  to  one  mean  or  dishonest 
act,  to  keep  them  from  the  poor-hocse.  I  may 
yet  fill  a  pauper' s  gi-ave,  but  I  will  die  an  honest 
MAN.  My  remotest  posterity  shall  never  have 
cause  to  blush  at  the  mention  of  my  name.  No 
mask  on  the  earth  will  ever  degrade  my  brow,  nor 
deck  it  with  the  red  glow  of  burning  shame. 

"Not  one  of  our  children,  save  alone  Eva,  has 
one  iota  of  heart  in  her  marriage,  nor  love  for  the 
husband  to  whom  it  will  bind  her.  I  have  told 
Oglethrop  that  Eva  will  be  without  a  dowry,  and 
the  brave,  noble  fellow  said  that  it  Avas  her  he 
wanted;  he  would  make  her  comfortable  and 
happy,  and  he  will. 

"Concerning  the  other  parties,  if  money  con- 
siderations influence  them,  I  shall  not  pity  their 
disappointment,  nor  will  it  render  the  girls  more 
unhappy  than  they  would  otherwise  have  been. 
I  Avill  leave  informing  them  to  you." 

Mrs.  M :  "You  don't  imagine,  I  hope,  that 

I  am  fool  enough  to  do  it.  As  to  love  in  those 
matches,  that  is  nonsense.  The  vulgar  proverb 
that  '  when  poverty  comes  in  at  the  front  door, 
love  flies  out  at  the  back  window,'  has  in  it  more 
reality  than  romance. 

"But,  Norman  Mountjoy,  let  me  tell  you,  once 
for  all,  that  your  sentimental  sermon  has  had  no 
tendency  to  change  my  mind.  My  resolution  is 
taken,  my  purpose  firmly  estabhshed.  The  money 
I  am  going  to  have,  without  your  aid." 

M :  "It  appears  that  you  are  applying  the 

proverb  in  our  own  case  with  a  vengeance.  Let 
me  warn  you  that  I  wash  my  hands  of  the  trans- 
action. If  you  raise  any  money,  it  must  be  with 
the  positive  understanding  that  I  am  in  no  way 
responsible.  If  I  am  driven  to  desperation,  I 
shall  publish  this  caution  to  the  world. 

"In  calm  prosperity,  I  have  permitted  you  to 
guide  the  helm  at  pleasure.  Now,  in  the  crisis  of 
the  storm,  at  a  day  forever  too  late,  I  must  assert 
my  long  lethargic  yet  proper  authority.     Since 


vou  will  abandon  my  steerage,  I  am  resolved  that 
you  shall  not  wreck  my  honor  with  your  own. 

"  Had  I  asserted  my  rightful  authority  at  the 
proper  time,  this  deep  mortification  and  shameful 
rupture  would  not  now  exist.  I  have  acted 
most  indiscreetly,  and  must  now  pay  for  my  folly 
a  terrible  penalty." 

Mrs.  M  : "  Have  no  fears ;  I  will  in  no 

wise  compromise  you." 

With  the  ferocity  of  the  baffied  lioness  flash- 
ing in  her  grand  eyes,  the  lustre  of  whose  beauty 
still  glows  with  undiminished  loveliness,  and  her 
winning  face,  yet  unblemished  bv  the  wrinkling 
strokes  of  time,  livid  with  rage,  she  defiantly 
turns  her  back  on  her  noble,  long-indulgent  hus- 
band, and  proudly  glides  out  of  the  room. 

Poor  Mountjoy;  admirable, adorable  relic  of  a 
race  that  is  no  more — of  an  age  that  is  dead! 
He  has  received  a  mortal  wound,  piercing  deeply 
into  the  fountain-source  of  his  vitals — hopelessly 
incurable.    He  is  truly  a  broken-hearted  man. 

At  this  late  d&y,  when  overwhelmed  with  the 
dire  burdens  of  other  cruel  misfortunes,  he  sees 
his  queenly  idol,  at  whose  shrine  he  has  bowed 
with  a  bUndly  confiding  adoration  for  more  than 
twenty  years,  divested  of  her  divine  robes  of 
true  and  pure  womanhood,  standing  before  him 
in  the  nude  enormity  of  her  rebellious  mutiny 
against  the  hallowed  sacredness  of  plighted 
vows  and  conjugal  devotion.  The  ideal  diadem 
of  other  and  brighter  days,  Avhen  she  was  his 
joy,  his  pride,  and  his  hope,  is  displaced  by  the 
dark  and  deeply  obscuring  mask.  Now  she  is  un- 
scrupulously avowing  her  resolution  to  go  forth 
and  practice  the  curse-breeding  art  of  fraudulent 
deception. 

Her  heart,  once  so  tender,  so  loving,  and  so 
,  pure  that  her  guardian  angel  could  have  but 
adored  her  with  the  purity  of  a  celestial  devo- 
tion akin  to  that  mutual  spiritual  love  ever 
springing  eternally  in  the  breasts  of  the  heavenly 
born  hosts,  she  has  cruelly,  unfeelingly  steeled 
against  the  loving,  noble  appeals  of  her  dis- 
tressed husband's  sad  and  wretched  heart. 

She  denies  him  the  priceless  boon  of  so  much 
as  one  httle  word  of  comforting  consolation — a 
balm  which  the  broken,  bleeding  heart  craves 
with  sleepless  fondness,  even  when  there  is  no 


MOUNTJOY  HOUSE   IN   THE   STOKM-CLOUD. 


129 


source  to  which  the  anxious,  weary  eyes  of  the 
despairing  watcher  may  turn,  in  anticii^ation  of 
beliolding  that  blessed  form  approaching,  to  ad- 
minister the  soothing  antidote. 

Such  is  a  vain  desire,  doomed  and  fated  to  be 
reahzed — never  in  this  world.  Ten  thousand 
times  more  bitter  and  cruel  must  be  the  pangs 
of  disappointment  experienced  by  him  wlio 
possesses  their  source  in  the  copious  profusion  of 
pearly  richness,  when  he  finds  the  sparkhng 
wealth  of  its  fountain  closed  and  barred,  coldly, 
unfeelingly  against  the  craving  thirst  of  his 
parched  and  lacerated  soul.  This  inestimable 
treasure  of  Norman  Mountjoy,  he  finds  in  the 
trying  hour  of  his  direful  extremity,  when  he 
turns  to  it  as  a  last  source  to  seek  that  consola- 
tion which  he  sorely  needs  in  this  bitter  moment 
of  cruel  misfortune,  hopelessly,  irretrievably  sacri- 
ficed on  the  altar  of  a  madly  blind  Ambition  ! 

Years-  ago,  unknown  to  him,  the  Guardian 
Angel  of  this  spell-bound  dream  of  his  life  has 
been  again  and  again  forced  to  turn  away  from 
his  fond  charge,  and  weep.  Worse  and  worse 
grew  this  frenzied  madness,  until  at  length  his 
influence  was  utterly  disregarded ;  he  was  under 
the  inevitable  necessity  of  reluctantly  abandon- 
ing her  to  the  fate  of  her  choice,  and  of  stand- 
ing alone  on  his  mountain  top  of  nobihty  and 
honor. 

A  very  few  days  after  the  unpleasant  inter- 
view between  this  hitherto  agreeable  couple,  who 
have  at  this  time  discovered  that  their  spirits 
are  widely  severed,  we  find  Helen  Mountjoy 
alone  in  the  superbly  furnished  private  office  of 
a  wealthy  down-town  firm,  apparently  laboring 
under  the  almost  uncontrollable  emotion  of  some 
highly  agitating  excitement.  Evidently,  she  is 
impatiently  waiting  for  some  momentarily  ex- 
pected party.  Quite  soon,  however,  is  her  anxious 
vigil  rewarded.  Samuel  Van  Allen  and  Felix 
Mortimer  enter  the  apartment  together,  in  a  state 
of  ill-disguised  embarrassment;  and  both  in  the 
same  breath  greet  her  with  the  ejaculation : 

"Why,  my  dear  Mrs.  Mountjoy,  to  what  are 
we  indebted  for  this  quite  unexpected  but  most 
agreeable  surprise  ?  " 

With  an  air  of  freezing  disdain  and  dignified 
haughtiness,  she  recoils  a  pace,  hurhng  at  first  one 


and  then  the  other  looks  of  proud  and  triumph- 
ant defiance ;  then  re-advancing,  a  paper  in  each 
hand, — while  the  two  men  turn  livid,  then  pale, 
and  tremble  violently, — she  extends  her  hands, 
one  to  each,  as  she  says  in  a  thrilling  tone : 

"Read,  Villains;  and  learn  whether  or  not 
there  is  pleasure  in  my  visit!  " 

As  each  victim,  in  the  presence  of  his  relentless 
persecutor,  opened  the  paper  and  beheld  the  well- 
known  characters  of  his  own  hand-writing,  em- 
bodied in  a  clandestine  hillet-doux,  intended  for 
other  eyes  than  those  that  had  read  the  dark 
mystery  of  its  secret  intrigue,  he  felt  as  though 
he  would  like  to  vanish  through  the  floor. 

Each  letter  was  of  the  same  purport,  nearly 
the  same  words — one  addressed  to  Beatrice,  the 
other  to  Rosalind  Mountjoy.     They  ran : — 

"May  1st,  1865 
"Miss  Beatrice  Mountjoy: 

"My  Heart's  Adoration: 

"Every  contemj^lated  ar- 
rangement for  our  stolen  meetings  has  been 
completed.  Together,  Mr.  Mortimer  and  I, 
have'  rented  and  furnished  a  cosy  Httle  cot- 
tage in  a  romantic  spot,  just  beyond  the  sub- 
urbs— a  nice  drive  there  and  return — where  we 
can  go,  with  you  and  Rosalind,  in  a  handsome 
carriage ;  enjoy  each  other's  society  for  a  while, 
and  no  one  else  in  all  the  world  need  be  any  the 
wiser,  as  all  of  us  will  have  equally  potent  mo- 
tives for  guarding  our  mysterious  secret,  both 
before   and  after  your  marriage. 

"To-morrow,  at  two  o'clock  p.  m.,  go  veiled  to 

Place,  where  you  will  find  a  carriage  with 

black  horses,  standing  closely  to  the  north  side  of 
the  statue :  enter  it,  without  a  word :  the  driver 
will  be  posted.     Don't  fail. 

"  Your  devoted  slave, 

"Samuel  Van.  Allen." 

Mortimer:  "Well,  Madam,  to  say  the  least, 
we  have  all  been  guilty  of  an  unpardonable  indis- 
cretion. Beyond  any  sort  of  doubt  the  young 
ladies  have  most  imprudently  encouraged  us,  in 
meeting  all  our  advances  more  than  half-way." 

Mrs.  M :  "  Miserable,  detestable  wretches ! 

Married  men — ingrates !  life  beneficiaries  of  Nor- 
man   Mountjoy,    your    more    than  friend,   who 


130 


^lYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


would  have  confided  the  care  of  his  daughters, 
regarding  you  virtually  in  the  light  of  a  member 
of  the  family — to  your  honor,  as  though  you  were 
his  own  brothers.  If  this  is  the  gratitude  that  you 
have  feigned  to  feel — the  coin  in  which  you  repay 
friendships,  I  pity  those  upon  whom  you  would 
wreak  vengeance. 

"  Should  this  become  known,  your  lives  are 
not  worth  a  penny.  And  become  known  it  will, 
unless  you  make  ample  atonement  before  the  sun 
goes  down  to-morrow. 

"  One  condition  :  never  dare  recognize  nor 
communicate  with  ray  daughters  again.  Under- 
stand me :  I  shall  never  either  meet  or  recog- 
nize you.  Should  you  wish  to  communicate  witl. 
me  in  relation  to  obtaining  these  evidences  of 
your  guilt,  commission  a  third  party.  I  scorn  to 
speak  another  word  to  you,  more  than  to  inform 
you  that  early  day  after  to-morrow  you  will  find 
your  abominable  cases  of  base  infidelity  to  your 
own  pure  wives,  and  fiendish  perfidy  to  the  con- 
fiding friendship  of  my  sadly  duped  family,  in 
the  hands  of  attorneys,  with  changeless  and  un- 
relenting instructions." 

Before  either  one  could  sufficiently  compose 
himself  to  reply,  she  had  passed  out  of  the  door 
into  the  street,  entered  her  carriage,  and  was  roll- 
ing rapidly  away. 

Van  A :  "Well,  Felix,  we  are  in  a  pretty 

pickle.  See  to  what  the  anticipated  sweets  of 
stolen  felicity  have  brought  us.  Ecstacies  of  bliss 
not  only  too  fierce  to  last,  but  even  too  much  for- 
bidden ever  to  be  realized!  Th«  sheen  of  beauty 
decking  those  temptingly  fragrant  roses,  was 
guarded  by  sharp  and  merciless  thorns,  which 
still  remain  deeply  and  immovably  punctured  in 
our  flesh." 

Mortimer:  "Oh,  and  I  see  no  available  rem- 
edy !  Our  irretrievable  ruin  may  be  the  ultimate 
penalty.  For  my  part,  I  would  pay  fifty  thou- 
sand dollars  to  be  out  of  it.  The  amorous 
minxes!  Never  were  men  more  tempted  and  en- 
couraged. It  is  past  my  comprehension  to  under- 
stand how  those  letters  fell  into  the  old  lady's 
hands.  I  should  rather  be  at  the  mercy  of  any 
other  woman  in  the  city." 

Van  a :  "  It  is  of  httle  consequence  how 

she  obtained  those  tell-tale  papers :  we  know  she 


has  them;  and  with  us  the  vital  question  is  to 
get  them  and  ourselves  out  of  her  grasp.  I  will 
pay  fifty  thousand  dollars;  but  I  do  not  beheve 
that  she  will  accept  it.  She  wiU  squeeze  us  for 
our  last  drop  of  blood.  I  move  that  we  go  to 
Madam  Vais-entre,  and  employ  her  to  negotiate 
the  matter  for  us.  She  is  a  match  for  Madam 
Mountjoy.  We  will  authorize  her  not  to  ex- 
ceed twenty-five  thousand  dollars,  and  if  this  is 
;  declined,  to  ascertain  the  final  ultimatum  de- 
j    manded.     What  say  you,  Fehx  ?" 

Mortimer:  "Agreed;  let  us  go  at  once." 

Madam  Vais-entre  is  famous  in  the  science  of 
clairvoyance.  She  is  wealthy;  and  among  her 
aristocratic  neighbors,  she  is  reputed  to  be  fairly 
entitled  to  a  claim  to  respectability.  Certainly 
there  is  nothing  disreputable  about  her  house  nor 
her  surroundings.  The  most  respectable  of  both 
sex,  openly  and  fearlessly  call  at  her  residence  at 
any  seasonable  hour,  day  or  night,  to  seek  her  ser- 
vices in  divers  ways.  Hence,  by  degrees,  she 
becomes  the  repository  of  many  and  varied 
secrets. 

To  her  immediate  neighbors  the  fact  is  not 
known ;  yet  nevertheless,  tlu-ough  her  instrumen- 
tality some  of  the  shadiest  intrigues  ever  per- 
petr-ated  in  high  life  are  negotiated.  In  this 
role  she  is  utterly  unknown,  except  in  aristo- 
cratic society;  and  even  there  not  extensively. 
She  is  far  more  cawtious  in  selecting  her  clients 
than  some  famihes  in  the  most  exclusive  circles 
are  in  discriminating  as  to  the  characters  of 
young  men  permitted,  and  even  sohcited  to  call 
on  the  young  lady  members  of  such  households. 

To  Mrs.  Mountjoy,  Madam  Vais-entre  is  no 
stranger ;  hence  she  will  neither  be  shocked  nor 
surprised  at  finding  this  lady  representing  Van 
Allen  and  Mortimer,  to  negotiate  terms  with 
her,  concerning  the  result  of  which  she  is  far 
more  anxious  than  they  imagine  her  to  be. 

Norman  and  Evahna  Mountjoy  are  alone  to- 
gether at  home. 

Evalina:  "My  poor,  dear  papa:  What  terrible 
thing  has  happened  ?  What  is  the  matter  with 
you  ?  What  crushing,  silent,  unutterable  sorrow 
is  bowing  down  your  head  as  though  it  was 
overburdened  with  the  ponderous  weight  of 
years,    and    distracted   with    cruel    anxiety  and 


MOUNTJOY  HOUSE  IN   THE  STORM-CLOUD. 


131 


liopeless  cares  ?  Have  you  never  another  smile, 
another  loving  word,  another  caress,  another  kiss 
for  your  httle  Eva,  who  loves  and  pities  you, 
oil,  more  than  words  can  tell? 

"  Come,  papa,  let  me  put  my  arms  round  your 
neck  once  again,  as  I  used  to  do  in  the  good, 
bright  days  of  yore — tliat  dear  old  time  of  happy 
childhood,  when  cruel  care  had  written  no  sor- 
row-wrinkles on  your  placid  brow,  and  your 
face  ever  wore  a  sweet  and  tranquil  smile.  Oh, 
whither  have  they  flown — those  blessed  days, 
with  all  their  joys  ?  Alas !  cruel  Custom's  giddy 
splendors  have  robbed  us  of  our  serene  and 
loving  bhssfulness.  Let  me  kiss  your  Hps  as 
tiien,  my  poor  papa,  and  soothe  your  aching 
brow  with  the  gently  loving  caress  of  my  hand. 
There,  now,  my  papa,  rest  your  weary  head  on 
my  shoulder. 

"  I  could  not  go  away  to-night  into  the  festive 
throng,  and  leave  you  alone  to  the  mercy  of 
your  consuming  sorrow.  I  have  staid  at  home 
to  try  and  comfort  you." 

MouNTjoY :  "  God  bless  you,  my  angelic  Eva. 
I  would  not  exchange  the  bliss  of  this  blessed 
night,  alone  with  my  darling,  for  years  of  ci'ui'l, 
liitter,  disappointing  life.  How  thankful  I  am 
for  this  precious  opportunity.  You  are  my  last 
and  only  hope  in  this  heartless  world.  Poor 
Cassandra !  poor  Beatrice  I  poor  RosaHnd ! — fur 
them  there  is  no  happiness  treasured  up  in  the 
storehouse  of  Fate.  You  are  each  about  to  em- 
bark on  the  all-serious  voyage  of  life :  they,  as  the 
victims  of  cruel,  plotting,  match-making  con- 
ventionahty,  with  neither  heart  nor  love  as  a 
soothing  balm  to  ameliorate  the  bitterness  of 
their  social  sacrifice;  you,  of  your  own  free  will 
and  choice.  You  are  a  good,  sensible  girl,  Eva; 
you  have  made  a  most  admirable  choice  for 
your  life  companion.  I  am  proud  of  it.  It  is 
now  with  you  whether  your  lives  are  happy  or 
miserable. 

"Look  into  your  loving  father's  care-worn 
face ;  picture  it  indelibly  on  the  tablet  of  your 
memory ;  and  hearken  unto  the  words  that  lie 
utters  to  you,  while  your  eyes  thus  lingeringly 
gaze  upon  him;  and  let  them  be  engraved  on 
your  heart  as  though  seared  with  a  rod  of  white 
heated  iron. 


"Eva,  you  can  reduce  Orlando  Oglethrop 
to  the  pitiable  extremity  in  which  you  now 
behold  me,  or  you  can  render  him  ever  bright 
and  joyous,  as  you  now  recall  knowing  me  in  the 
olden  time,  which  to  me  is  dead  forevermore. 

"If  you  devote  your  days  and  your  nights  to 
the  giddy  whirl  of  social  frivolities,  and  neglect 
your  husband  and  your  home;  and  if,  in  addition 
to  this,  you  spend  all  the  money  he  can  make ; 
run  him  into  debt;  and  coldly,  cruelly,  unfeelingly 
lash  him  with  your  tongue  because  he  cannot 
nourish  your  extravagance  more  bountifully,  you 
will  drive  him  to  the  wretchedness  of  despair. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  you  are  a  comforting  help- 
mate to  him;  save  all  you  can;  cheer  him  Avith 
your  smiles ;  firmly  insist  in  the  very  outset  of 
your  journey  of  hfe,  that  plainer  and  cheaper 
appointments  connected  with  all  departments  of 
your  household  than  those  he  will  be  resolved 
to  supply,  is  preferable  to  you;  and  that  when 
brightened  by  the  halo  of  cheerfulness  which  true 
and  pure  love  will  shed  around  them,  they  will 
be  far  more  handsome  than  the  most  elegant 
luxuries  would  appear,  in  the  chilly  atmosphere 
of  difiident  formality  that  pervades  the  conjugal 
abodes  of  aristocratic  coldness; — how  happy,  how 
thrice  blessed  is  his  lot! 

"  Take  this  latter  course,  my  child;  stand  by  and 
pursue  it  with  unwavering  constancy,  and  you 
will  render  him  supremely  happy.  Even  the  bitter 
trials  of  misfortune  would  be  alleviated  by  the 
soothing  balm  of  such  an  exquisite  antidote  ;  for 
misfortune  often  pines  for  sympathy. 

"  There  is  no  other  road  to  happiness  for  you 
in  this  world;  no  foundation  for  the  shade  of  a 
hope  in  the  eternal.  You  must  start  poor.  You 
do  not  know  even  the  bare  definition  of  the  term 
economy.  Alas!  you  have  never  witnessed  its 
practical  operation  in  any  respect  whatever.  In 
applying  it,  your  good  sense  must  be  your 
guide. 

"  iSTow,  my  Eva,  let  me  take  your  nand  in  mme, 
as  a  binding  token  of  fidelity,  while  I  tell  you 
the  secret  of  my  bitter  woe.  Nerve  yourself,  my 
poor  daughter,  in  order  that  the  revelation  I 
am  about  to  make  may  not  shock  you  beyond 
your  capacity  for  endurance.  I  have  told  Orlando, 
the  brave,  noble  fellow ! 


132 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


"  You  are  a  poor,  dowerless  girl,  not  a  million- 
aire's daughter,  as  the  world  imagines.  You 
have  witnessed  your  fortune  melting  away  around 
you,  in  the  gay  and  festive  scenes  through  which 
you  have  been  passing  for  the  last  few  years. 
I  am  a  poor  man.  My  family  is  unprepared  for 
the  transition.     My  heart  is  broken. 

"Do  not  mention  this  to  your  sisters,  nor  betray 
any  emotion  on  account  of  it.  Your  mother 
desires  to  guard  the  matter  as  a  profound  secret 
from  you  all  until  after  the  wedding;  but  I  could 
not  bear  the  idea  of  withholding  it  from  you. 
And  this  opportunity,  and  the  tender  manifesta- 
tions of  sympathy  and  love  which  you  have  so 
profusely  lavished  upon  me  to-night,  have  com- 
bined to  influence  my  determination  to  undecive 
you  in  regard  to  the  treacherous  cloud  lowering 
so  near,  and  ready  to  obscure  the  bright  light 
which  shines  with  such  glorious  brilliancy  in  your 
so  much  envied  home,  leaving  you  all  in  the  ever 
rayless  midnight  of  despair ;  as  I  am  now. 

"Do  not  grieve  for  the  loss ;  you  are  young.  The 
world,  with  a  promising  future,  is  before  yor. 
You  will  gradually  but  surely  advance.  You 
enjoy  yet  unsuUied  honor  and  spotless  purity, 
worth  more,  ten  thousand  times,  than  untold 
millions  of  gUttering  gold,  and  all  the  false  honors 
it  could  bestow. 

"For  myself  I  do  not  care.  I  could  cheerfully 
descend  to  a  more  humble  sphere  of  life,  and  there 
be  happy.  It  is  for  my  family  that  riiy  heart 
bleeds.  It  would  kill  your  poor  mother  should 
the  storm  that  has  been  so  long  brewing  sud-_ 
denly  burst  with  its  furious  violence  upon  her 
head. 

"  As  a  leading  merchant,  from  my  first  day  in 
that  sphere  until  now,  more  than  thirty  years,  I 
have  never  in  any  respect  or  degree  swerved 
from  the  path  of  strict  integrity  and  honor.  I 
have  nothing  connected  with  my  counting-house 
to  look  back  upon  with  shame  or  regret.  From  this 
fact  now  springs  my  chief  source  of  consolation. 

"Oh,  my  daughter,  how  little  the  gay  and  festive 
social  world  knows  of  silent  sorrows  and  secret 
struggles  that  much  of  the  money  which  con- 
tributes to  its  enjoyment  have  cost  its  overworked 
commercial  slaves,  in  the  gloomy,  cheerless  pre- 
cincts of   the  counting-house.      Here,  often  the 


heart  grows  sick  and  the  brain  whirls,  harassed 
with  the  vexatious  and  disappointing  problems 
ever  occurring  and  recurring  again.  And  at  the 
same  time,  the  incessant  drain  which  the  always 
increasing  and  pressing  demands  of  the  home 
circle  make,  as  they  steadily  encroach  upon  the 
reserve  forces,  and  undermine  themselves,  the 
vital  safety  of  its  pleasure-nourishing  institutions, 
perpetually  engulfing  some  poor,  harrassed  toiler 
in  miserable  ruin  I 

"  The  mental  strain  and  nervous  debility  thus 
engendered  saps  the  healthy  current  of  the  sys- 
tem, and  soon  drives  the  wretched  victim,  if  not 
to  crime  or  suicide,  certainly  into  a  premature 
grave.  Note  a  business  man  with  heavy  dark 
circles  under  the  eyes,  his  appetite  failing,  his 
conversation  languid  and  forced,  and  his  entire 
deportment  abstracted  and  listless,  and  you  will 
see  a  man  upon  whom  the  immedicable  malady  is 
surely  preying.  The  gay  world  may  meet  him  in 
that  brilliant  drawing  room  of  his  palatial  home, 
and  receive  his  sickly,  meaningless  smile,  wholly 
unsuspecting  that  a  cruel  and  merciless  torment 
is  steadily  causing  his  vitality  to  ebb  out.  Many 
will  gaze  with  envious  eyes  upon  the  gilded  mag- 
nificence of  his  princely  mansion,  and  the  manifest 
fullness  of  joy  in  which  his  family  revel,  and 
exclaim,  '  Fortunate,  thrice  happy  man ! ' 

"These  are  the  stern  and  dreary  truths  that  I 
desired  to  impress  on  your  youthful  mind,  my 
Eva.  Remember  them ;  treasure  them  up  in  your 
tender  heart,  and  so  model  your  course  of  life 
as  always  to  shield  you  and  yours  from  the  hope- 
less thraldom  of  the  sure  and  inveterate  curse 
which  they  infallibly  entail. 

"  Eva,  my  dear  child,  keep  the  words  I  have 
uttered  to  you  to-night  fresh  in  your  mind  when 
the  tongue  now  speaking  them  is  silent  and  cold 
in  the  grave.  I  am  warning  you  now,  as  it  were, 
from  the  margin  of  the  tomb.  Ere  long,  in  a 
few  little  weeks,  or  at  most  months,  and  you 
will  see  your  father's  troubled  face  and  hear  his 
trembling  voice  no  more." 

Eva  :  "  My  poor  papa !  Oh,  crudest  of  all 
fates  !  Papa,  forgive  me  ere  you  leave  me ;  and 
pray  Heaven  to  pardon  me  for  the  part  I  have 
unconsciously  taken  in  bringing  upon  your  de- 
voted head  this  terrible,  more  than  cruel,  wretch- 


MOUNTJOY  HOUSE  IN  THE   STORM-CLOUD. 


133 


edness.  I  have  never  asserted  it  to  any  one  but 
Effie,  yet  these  extravagant  folUes  have  always 
been  loathsome  to  me. 

"  This  is  why  I  selected  Orlando :  in  order  that 
I  mig-ht  escape  from  the  endless  slavery  of  social 
exactions  such  as  ours,  to  the  bhssful  quietude 
and  sweet  repose  of  the  tranquil  hfe  Effie  has 
always  been  pictiiring  tome.  Oh  papa!  it  will 
break  my  heart,  the  thought  that  if  we  had  all 
been  as  economical  as  Effie  has  been,  you  might 
now  be  Avell  and  happy.  And  she  was  worth 
more  money  than  all  four  of  us  ever  were,  yet 
she  never  has  spent  more  than  half  her  allowance 
on  herself,  still  everybody,  everywhere  she  goes, 
loves  her  for  her  own  sweet,  simple  self,  more 
t!ian  any  of  us  were  ever  loved. 

'•In  her  plain  yet  handsome  and  tastefully 
made  dresses,  she  always  appears  more  fascina- 
ting than  any  of  us,  in  our  costumes  costing 
many  times  more  than  hers. 

"  Sometimes  I  have  made  a  feeble  attempt 
toward  remonstrating  with  mamma,  but  in  vain. 
She  would  tell  me  that  I  was  intended  to  wash 
dishes  and  mend  old  clothes  for  some  trash  like 
Oglethrop ;  that  I  would  then  be  able  to  econo- 
mize to  my  heart's  content.  I  suppose  that.her 
words  were  prophetic.  Poor  mamma!  I  do  not 
know  what  will  become  of  her,  when  the  storm 
which  you  have  pictured  to  me,  overtakes  her. 

"Cassandra,  Beatrice,  and  Rosalind  will  be 
protected ;  but  they  loathe  the  sheltering  care  to 
Avhich  they  are  going.  I  esteem  Col.  Wortliington, 
but  never  could  endure  the  presence  of  the  other 
two,  with  all  their  influential  wealth  and  exalted 
social  station ;  but  they  will  be  kind  to  my  sisters." 

M :  "Yes;  and  they  will  care  for  your 

mother.  There  has  always  been  the  strongest  mu- 
tual friendship  between  her  and  each  of  them. 
Usually,  she  drops  any  member  of  our  social 
circle  who  fails  in  business,  or  in  any  other 
way  passes  under  a  cloud;  but  not  so  with 
them.  When  Atkinson,  Flowers  &  Co.  failed, 
sh.  threw  open  her  doors  more  widely  and  cor- 
dially than  before ;  and  she  has  since  planned  the 
union  between  them  and  her  hapless  daughters 
Instinctively,  I  have  ever  since  felt  an  aversion 
toward  them,  but  always  try  to  persuade  myself 
that  it  spnngs  from  the  natural  repugnance  that 


business  men  all  cherish  for  those  of  their  brethren 
who  have  dropped  out  of  line  by  the  wayside. 
I  have  never  been  able  to  regard  their  failure  in 
a  favorable  light.  More  than  ever  noAV  should  I 
like  to  hope  and  believe  that  it  was  fair  and 
honest;  and  that  poor  Mrs.  Flowers  was  not 
victimized,  with  other  creditors  of  the  firm.  But 
the  truth  is,  they  started  too  soon,  and  were  at 
once  strong. 

"  Wortliington  is  the  unljleraished  soul  of 
honor,  and  would  surely  make  Cassandra  happy, 
if  there  was  not  so  great  a  disparity  between 
their  ages ;   and  if  she  loved  him. 

"As  to  forgiving  you,  my  poor  daughter,  there 
is  no  cause  to  forgive.  Neither  Heaven  nor  I  can 
deem  you  guilty.  You  are  neither  directly  nor 
indirectly  responsible  for  the  disastrous  conse- 
quences which  have  overwhelmed  me. 

"  Your  mother  has  conducted  her  social  cam- 
paigns, under,  and  in  strict  conformity  with  the 
tactics  of  the  school  in  which  she  was  trained. 
But  for  the  war  and  its  bUghting,  ruinous  in- 
fluences and  effects,  we  never  would  have  known 
a  financial  want.  This  proves  how  unstable  and 
uncertain  in  this  world  are  tlie  best  grounded  pros- 
pects and  hopes." 

Eva  :  "  How  thankful  I  am  that  you  do  not 
blame  me,  my  dear  papa.  It  would  kill  me  to 
think  that  you  blamed  me.  Papa,  how  cruel  it  is 
in  mamma  to  be  resolved  to  sacrifice  poor  little 
Effie  to  naughty  cousin  Arnold." 

M :   "  Yes,  but  her  labors  will  be  in  vain. 

Worthington  is  against  her,  and  no  power  in  this 
world  can  change  him.  I  think  that  is  why  she 
so  readily  consented  to  give  you  to  Oglethrop, — 
she  thought  it  would  put  Worthington  under 
obligations  to  her,  and  ultimately  to  secure  his 
cooperation  and  influence  with  Effie,  in  behalf  of 
Noel,  who  is  so  bad  that  it  makes  me  blush  to  think 
he  is  related  to  my  family  by  kindred  ties  of  blood 
— but  still,  however,  your  mother  is  blind  to  his 
most  glaring  faults,  and  mildly  terms  them  natural, 
youthful  foibles.  I  have  no  sort  of  fear  that 
Arnold  Noel  will  ever  be  any  nearer  related  to 
Effie  than  he  now  is ;  and  there  is  fixed  between 
them  a  fathomless  impassable  guLf." 

Eva:  "Mamma  is  so  desperately  resolved,  I 
much    fear   she   will   cause   Effie    great    trouble 


134 


MYSTIC  KOMAXCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


before  she  evei'  determines  to  abandon  her 
purpose." 

M :  "  That  is  of  little  moment,  as  long  as  it 

does  not  succeed.  It  were  a  thousand  times 
better  for  Effie  if  these  efforts  drive  her  into  the 
grave,  rather  than  into  a  union  with  Arnold 
Noel." 

Eva  :  "  Oh,  my  dear  papa,  Effie  loves  you  so 
fondly,  your  troubles  would  afflict  her  as  cruelly 
as  they  do  me.  How  sadly  painful  your  dis- 
tressing words  are  now — they  will  forever  rankle 
in  my  breast! 

"  Papa,  tell  me  pray,  is  there  no  way  in  this 
world  to  save  you  ?  Can  Gilead  suj^ply  you  no 
balm  of  hope  ?  Is  there  nothing  that  you  can 
even  imagine  possible  to  attempt,  that  by  the 
barest  miracle  could  either  bring  you  relief  or 
temporarily  alleviate  the  bitterness  of  your  cruel 
lot?  Whisper  but  the  faintest  breath  of  the 
comforting  consolation  of  a  shade,  the  most 
mythical  form  of  hope.  Oh,  my  poor  papa !  yoar 
own  littlo  Eva  would  give  freely  and  joyfully  her 
young  life  to  save  you.  Speak  to  me,  papa,  of 
hope !" 

M ■:  "It  were  cruel,  my  darhng,  to  de- 
ceive you.  There  is  no  hope.  I  am  beyond  the 
reach  of  mortal  skill  and  power;  my  case  is 
hopelessly  incurable." 

Scene  changes  to  the  sitting-room  of  Mount- 
joy  House,  where  Madam  Vais-entre  and  Helen 
Mountjoy  meet. 

Madam  Vais-entre  :  "  Why,  my  dear  Mrs. 
Mountjoy,  I  am  so  glad  to  see  you.  I  meet  you 
to-day  as  a  peace-maker;  and  I  desire  to  arrange 
with  you  the  unfortunate  unjileasantness  between 
yourself,  Van  Allen  and  Mortimer." 

Mrs.  M :   "  The  villains !    You  can  arrange 

nothing  with  me.  T  am  resolved  to  bring  them 
into  court.  What  proposition  have  you  to  make, 
pray?" 

Madam  V :  "  My  authority  is  rather  in- 
definite, being  merely  of  a  nature  empowering 
me  to  open  negotiations  with  a  view  to  paving 
the  way  to  an  ultimate  amicable,  or  at  least 
peaceable  and  quiet,  settlement.  It  would  l^e  a 
very  shocking  and  a  most  damaging  affair  to  get 
before  the  public,  scandalous  alike  to  all  parties 
when  once  in  the  mouths  of  gossips. 


'•  It  would,  therefore,  be  far  better  for  the 
sake  of  your  family,  and  in  view  of  the  interesting 
period  so  near  at  hand  with  your  daughters,  to 
punish  those  imprudent,  disloyal  Benedicts  witli 
heavy  damages  in  money,  as  a  partial  bahn  to  3'Oiu- 
much  outraged  feelings.  I  am  persuaded  that 
they  would  each  pay  a  few  thousand  dollars  to 
stifle  the  matter." 

Mrs.   M :    '"A  few  thousand    dollars?     I 

would  not  even  stoop  to  consider  a  direct  offer  of 
less  than  fifty  thousand  dollars  from  each  of  them  ; 
and  this  I  might  indignantly  refuse.  Until  you 
can  talk  more  definitely,  our  interview  is  at  an  end. 
Grood-day,  Madam  Vais-entre." 

The  clairvoyant  departs,  and  soon  joins  Van 
Allen  and  Mortimer. 

Madam  V :  "  Oentlemen,  the  case  is  des- 
perate. If  you  wish  it  settled,  authorize  me  to 
make  a  direct  offer  of  one  hundred  thousand  dol- 
lars, and  place  me  in  a  position  to  close  the  offer 
the  same  moment  it  is  made.  She  is  furious,  and 
will  hardly  talk  about  settling  at  all.  Unless  you 
have  some  very  compromising  letters  from  the 
young  ladies,  with  which  I  can  throw  a  damper 
on  her  aggressive  rage,  nothing  can  be  done.  I 
have  no  assurance  that  she  will  accept  any  offer 
that  could  be  made." 

Van  a :  "We  have  not  the  scratch  of  a 

pen  from  them ;  and  more  than  this,  to  our  detri- 
ment, they  have  never  acted,  except  on  the  one 
occasion,  "but  with  the  most  perfectly  commendable 
decorum  and  modest  jiropriety.  We  had  better, 
therefore,  I  think,  arrange  a  check,  Mortimer,  and 
authorize  Madam  V to  settle  the  matter  be- 
fore sun-down  to-day." 

Mortimer:  "  Certainly,  by  all  means,  and  with- 
out delay." 

She  departs  Avith  the  check,  and  later,  returns 
Avith  the  letters. 

;Madam  V :    "  Well,  gentlemen,  l^re  are 

yoiu'  dangerous  letters.  'You  have  paid  dearly 
for  seeking  forbidden  fruit.  But  for  mj^  being  pre- 
pared for  her  on  the  spu&of  the  moment,  the  set- 
tlement would  not  now  be  made." 

She  then  withdrew  from  the  scene. 

Van  a :  "  Oli,  Mortimer,  chisfoUy  is  a  ter- 
rible blow!  Should  any  unusual  stringency  or 
business  depression  occur,  the  want  of  this  sum 


THE  SPIKITS  OF  DEFIANCE  AND  MENACE. 


135 


of  money  will  seriously  cripple  us ;  but,  my  God, 
I  would  rather  part  with  the  last  dollar,  and  go  to 
the  bottom  of  the  river,  than  allow  thiy  affair  to 
be  made  public." 

M :  "  This  is  the  way  that  I  feel  about  it. 

It  is  a  lesson  that  we  will  carry  to  our  graves.  It 
now  appears  clear  to  my  mind  that  we  both  had 
much  better  sense  than  to  have  placed  ourselves 
in  a  position  where  we  were  even  liable  to  be- 
come subject  to  the  dangers  of  such  disastrous 
consequences  as  these  which  have  overtaken  us, 
and  those  worse  calamities  which  we  have  escaped. 
It  makes  my  blood  run  cold  to  think  to  what  a  des- 
perate result  this  miserable  indiscretion  might  have 
led. 

"  It  now  strikes  me  as  being  a  little  singular  that 
they  both  should  have  insisted  on  our  writing  to 
them  each  a  separate  letter." 

Van  a :    "Ah,    Mortimer,  had  our  blood 

run  as  cold  then  as  it  runs  now,  we  would  not  be 
in  this  pUght. — This  is  the  experience  of  almost 
all  men  who,  either  through  indiscretion  or  actual 
crime,  get  into  trouble.  Could  they  have  seen 
as  clearly  and  felt  as  sensibly  while  in  fancied 
security  they  were  weaving  about  themselves 
the  meshes  of  the  inextricable  net,  as  they  see 
after  they  awake  to  the  realization  of  their  situa- 
tion, and  find  that  they  are  hopelessly  entangled 
in  the  toils  of  their  own  ingenious  folly,  they 
would  stop  and  regain  a  place  of  safety  before 
the  last  open  spot  is  forever  closed  around  them. 
But  it  is  ever  the  same  with  all  men  who  embark 
in  any  forbidden  or  improper  enterprise  or  career, 
as  it  was  in  this  lamentable  instance  with  us. 
They  become  blindly  infatuated  with  the  delusive 
enchantments  of  their  mad  and  ruinous  folly.  Tliis 
blunts  the  naturally  keen  perceptions  of  the  finer 
sensibilities,  and  stifles  the  mutinous  admonitions 
of  the  ever  infallibly  true  conscience.  Then  they 
are  rational  madmen,  capable  of  perpetrating  any 
unnatural  excess,  and  awake  to  find  '  The  way  of 
the  transgressor  is  hard.'  " 


CHAPTER  XXXI. 

THE    SPIRITS    OF    DEFIANCE    AND    MENACE. 

"  For  a  woman's  heart  when  loving,  loyal  is  past  any 
proving: 
And  a  woman's  will  is  strong,  never  bent  by  Passion's 

blows : 
And  should  any  seek  to  harm  her,  flery  scorn  is  woman's 

armor; 
And  her  pride  Is  cold  and  frozen  as  eternal  Arctic 
snows." 

— M.  A.  Billings. 

Mrs.  Mount  joy:  "Now,  Arnold,  I  have  ar- 
ranged that  you  and  Effie  be  left  alone  in  the 
parlor  for  a  time  this  evening,  and  I  want  you  to 
make  good  use  of  the  opportune  moment  thus 
aflforded  you,  and  win  her  hand.  Don't  be  back- 
ward. She  treats  you  very  graciously,  and  appears 
to  take  a  lively  interest  in  the  story  of  your 
cruises.  This  is  the  very  best  sign  in  the  world. 
Put  the  question  boldly  and  press  it  obstinately, 
and  the  chances  are  all  in  your  favor  that  she 
will  commit  herself,  and  you  will  have  won  your 
fortune  in  one  little  evening.    Go  to  her  at  once." 

Arnold  Noel:  "You  can  rest  assured,  my 
dearest  aunt,  that  I  shall  do  my  very  utmost  to  suc- 
ceed; for  this  is  the  dearest  and  the  all-absorbing 
dream  of  my  Ufa." 

Mrs.  M :  "  That  is  right,  my  boy ;  you  are 

very  sensible." 

Noel  left  liis  aunt,  and  entered  the  parlor. 

Arnold  Noel:  "Well,  Miss  Effie,  I  have  told 
you  everything  I  can  think  of  concerning  the 
navy  and  the  sea.  But  permit  me  now  to  say  to 
you  that  there  is  a  nearer,  and  to  me  dearer  sub- 
ject about  which  I  wish  to  speak  to  you,  for  which 
I  crave  your  earnest  attention  and  most  serious 
consideration.  That  is  your  own  self,  and  my 
love  for ." 

Effie  :  "  Pursue  that  subject  no  further,  Arnold 
Noel.  My  heart  and  my  hand  can  never  be  yours 
— not  even  if  you  were  a  prince.  I  will  hold  no 
conversation  on  the  subject.  Our  interview  is  at 
an  end  forever.     Farewell." 

She  indignantly  walks  from  the  parlor. 

Noel  [Solus] :  "Well,  that  is  the  coolest  I  ever 
read  of.  I  must  seek  in  some  other  quarter  for 
wealth,  ease,  and  luxury.     Hang  it!    To  think  of 


136 


MYSTIC   ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE   GEEY. 


the  good,  jolly  times  I  have  lost  for  the  sake  of 
this  scornful,  unappreeiative  girl." 

Her  aunt  enters  the  parlor. 

Mrs.  M :   "What,  Arnold,  alone  so  soon? 

Ihnx  is  this?" 

Xoel:  '-She  left  me  forever,  the  instant  I 
broached  the  subject." 

Mrs.  M :   "  Keep  up  courage,  boy.     I  will 

take  her  in  hand  and  teach  her  some  manners 
;ind  common  sense.  A  pest  on  that  Dutch  aunt 
•f  hers." 

jSToel  :  "  Do  anything  you  like  and  can.  I  am 
certainly  a  dead  failure  when  she  will  not  listen 
to  my  uttering  a  word." 

She  at  once  sought  and  found  Effie. 

Mrs.  M :  "  How  is  this,  Effie,  that  you  treat 

Arnold  so  badly?" 

Effie  :  "  I  have  not  treated  him  badly,  madam, 
my  aunt.  He  had  the  presumption  to  insult 
me  by  attempting  to  make  love  to  me.  I  left  his 
company,  which  I  was  under  no  promise  to  remain 
in.  This  was  my  right.  Pardon  me,  I  do  not  de- 
sire to  talk  about  it." 

Mrs.  M :   "  Beware,  miss,  how  you  talk  to 

me.  You  may  repent  it.  Arnold  is  in  every 
way  your  equal." 

Effie  :  "  I  do  not  wish  to  wound  your  feeUngs, 
nor  to  have  you  wound  mine.  What  does  it  sig- 
nify if  he  is  my  superior  in  many  things,  which 
I  doubt  not  he  is — am  I  bound  to  throw  myself  at 
his  feet  ?  Never,  a  thousand  times  never.  Under- 
stand me,  my  aunt,  I  am  not  your  daughter  I 
do  not  recognize  your  right  to  make  a  match  for 
me.  I  owe  you  nothing;  am  tmder  no  obliga- 
tion to  you,  beyond  the  good-will  and  love  of  a 
niece ;  and  this  I  have  ever  faitlifully  rendered 
you.  We  will  now  part  this  very  instant ;  and  I 
shall  never  again  darken  your  door  until  you 
have  utterly  abandoned  this  question." 

Mrs.  M :   "  Do  not  be  so  hasty,  Effie.     I 

did  not  mean  to  offend  you.  It  will  appear  strange 
for  you  not  to  be  at  the  wedding." 

Effie;  "You  can  easily  frame  a  plausible  ex- 
cuse.    Grood-by."     [Bxit] 

Mrs.  M [Solus] :  "  I  have  met  ray  match 

for  once.  Who  could  have  thought  that  this 
quiet,  modest  girl  would  have  said  a  word  con- 
trary to  my  wish ?     But  I  swear  to  bring  her  to 


terms,  and  to  make  her  bitterly  repent  this  auda- 
cious conduct." 

Behold  this  unscrupulous  woman,  with  her 
masterful  bent  of  inclination  to  evil!  Nothing 
is  too  outrageous  for  her  to  attempt  if  it  but 
promises  to  consummate  her  wicked  designs — 
to  enslave  purity,  innocence  and  happiness  in  the 
thraldom  of  vice,  of  sin,  and  of  wretchedness  ! 

Poor  Effie  Edelstein!  sweet  child  of  Nature, 
fair  flower  of  beauty  and  of  goodness!  Alas, 
that  this  shadowy  phantom  of  plotting  mischief 
should  hover  about,  and  ever  seek  to  darken  thy 
pathway,  redolent  with  perfumes  exhaled  from 
springing  blossoms  of  hope ! 

Oh,  guardian  angels,  defend  her  nowj 


CHAPTER  XXXII. 

FROM    THE    SHORES    OF    THE    DARK    RIVER. 

"  While  the  purple  lilacs  1)10890111 

We  have,  dearest,  met  again. 

And  the  robin  and  the  blue-bird 

Greet  us  with  their  sweet  refrain. 
In  the  soft  and  gentle  twilight, 

Where  we  of  ttlmes,  love,  have  met, 
Won't  you  tell  me,  little  darling, 
That  you  dearly  love  me  yet?" 

Sextimental  Song. 
Effie  :  "  Lawrence,  do  I  dream,  or  are  Ave  sit- 
ting here  side  by  side   as  m  the  peaceful,  happy 
days  of  yore  ?     Yes,  this  is  you.     It  cannot  be  a 
delusive  spirit,  such  as  I  have  met  so  many  times 
in  the  shadowy  realms  of  inconstant  dream-land. 
"  Oh  how  good  Grod  has  been  to  you,  to  shield 
you  throughout  this  long  and  cruel  war,  when  the 
grave  was  so  often  opened  to  receive  you,  and 
to  snatch  you  out  from  the  very  jaws  of  death!" 
Lawrence  Pleasington  ;    "  Yes,  my  dear  Effie. 
it  is  I ;  and  I  am  very  happy  and  thankful  that 
we  are  once  more  safely  together,  and  my  days 
of  danger  and  separation  from  you  are  over. 

"  The  last  ordeal  through  which  I  passed  was 
the  worst  of  all,  a  thousand  times  more  terrible 
than  all  the  balance  of  the  war  together — that 
rayless  night 'of  death!  Oh,  the  unutterably 
nameless  horrors !  there  in  the  dire,  cheerless  mid- 
night of  that  dreary  pine  wilderness,  making 
ready  for  death  amid  the  stern  formalities  of 
preparation  for  my  execution,  which  I  knew  were 


FEOM  THE  SHOEES  OF  THE  DAKK  EIVEE. 


137 


going  on  around  me.  The  thoughts  of  you  and 
of  mother  that  tortured  my  agonized  soul ! — every 
moment  I  died  a  thousand  deaths !" 

Effie  :  "  Oh,  Lawrence !  how  good  we  ought 
ever  to  be,  as  an  acknowledgment  of  our  grateful 
thankfulness  to  heaven  for  your  miraculous  de- 
liverance in  the  last  final  moment  of  that  horrible 
night.  Surely  an  angel  guarded  you.  I  have 
often  wondered  whether  or  not  Grarland  Cloud 
took  any  part. in  sparing  your  life — whether,  in- 
deed, it  was  in  his  power  to  have  done  so.  That 
lie  would  have  saved  you  if  he  could,  I  do  not 
doubt." 

Lawrence:  "I,  too,  have  studied  much  about 
I  his.  It  was  only  possible,  in  two  ways  :  to  load 
the  guns  with  blank  cartridges,  or  to  instruct  the 
soldiers  to  fire  over  my  head.  This  last  I  feel 
confident  he  would  not  have  ordered.  I  beheve 
he  would  have  thus  loaded  the  guns,  provided  it 
was  known  to  no  person  but  himself.  This  pos- 
sibility I  am,  as  a  matter  of  course,  unable  to  de- 
termine. I  cannot  say  whether  or  not  I  heard 
bullets.  I  experienced  a  sensation  such  as  no 
other  occasion  in  this  world  could  produce.  The 
rlear,  sharp  voice  of  the  officer:  'Ready!'  the 
click  of  the  locks,  'aim!  fire!'  ran  through  my 
frame  like  a  current  of  electricity.  The  Winding 
Hash  and  simultaneous  report,  like  the  shock  of  a 
sudden  thunder-clap,  bhnded  and  deafened  me, 
and  there  was  a  roaring  in  my  head.  I  was  weak. 
I  must  have  nearly  or  quite  lost  consciousness. 
I  rather  indistinctly  remember  deciding  in  my 
mind  that  I  was  killed.  See  to  what  extremes 
the  imagination  will  lead.  Had  I  been  subject  to 
heart  disease,  I  should  undoubtedly  have  died. 

"When  I  reached  head-quarters,  two  hours 
later,  I  found  my  letters  and  other  httle  trinkets 
already  there." 

Effie  :  "  Well,  thank  God !  however  it  may  have 
been,  you  are  safe  now ;  so  let  us  talk  on  more 
pleasing  subjects  than  that  shocking  experience 
through  which  you  have  passed." 

Lawrence  :  "  Well,  of  what  shall  it  be  ?  If  I 
undertake  to  talk  about  you  and  our  anticipated 
relations,  you  might  serve  me  as  you  did  my  per- 
sistent rival.  I  will  try  to  dream  the  time  away 
until  Christmas— that  to  me  happiest  of  all  the 
joyous  days  of  my  life.  I  wish  it  was  to-morrow, 


that  Time  might  not  have  so  much  space  in  which 
to  play  her  fickle  freaks." 

Effie;  "  Well,  it  cannot  be  otherwise.  The 
time  will  soon  pass  away.  We  can  see  each 
other  whenever  we  wish,  thanks  to  Col.  Worth- 
ington  for  securing  you  a  position  in  the  bank. 
Aunt  Helen  would  annoy  me,  but  she  shall  not 
have  the  opportunity.  I  am  not  going  near  her 
again  until  there  is  no  danger  of  her  broaching 
her  distasteful  subject.  We  will  be  happy,  and 
the  time  will  glide  smoothly  and  serenely  for  us, 
between  the  pleasant  moments  in  which  we  shall 
enjoy  each  other's  society." 

Lawrence  :  "  Yes,  my  darling,  it  will  not  be 
like  the  tedious,  gloomy  days  of  separation  of  the 
past  four  dark  and  cheerless  years. —  We  will  be 


CHAPTER  XXXIIL 

THE    QUADRUPLE    HYMENEAL    CONSUMMATION. 

"  Few— none— find  what  they  love  or  could  have  lov'd  : 

Though  accident,  blind  contact  and  the  strong 
Necessity  of  loving,  have  removed 

Antipathies,  but  to  recur  ere  long. 
Envenomed  with  irrevocable  wrong; 

And  circumstance,  that  unspiritual  God 
And  miscreator,  makes  and  helps  along 

Our  coming  evils,  with  a  cruel  crutch-like  rod,— 

Whose  touch  turns  hope  to  dust— the  dust  we  all  have 

trod"  —Byron. 

The  preparations  and  the  appointments  for  the 
occasion  of  the  wedding  at  Mountjoy  House  far 
outstripped,  in  magnificence  and  splendor,  the 
most  extravagant  dreams  entertained  at  an 
earlier  day  by  its  ambitious,  scheming  mistress — 
the  mother  of  the  four  young  ladies  destined  to 
bestow  their  hands,  with  their  vows  of  phghted 
troth,  if  not  their  hearts,  to  the  four  men  with 
whom  they  are  to  be  formally  bound  for  life. 

We  have  beheld  her  wringing '  her  poor  hus- 
band's heart  with  relentless,  unpitying  c^pelty; 
and  then  again  extorting  the  money  to  supply 
the  demands  of  this  sumptuous  festival  from  the 
two  would-be  false  and  traitorous  friends  of  her 
family,  with  the  audacious  coolness  of  a  consum- 
mate actress  scientifically  versed  in  all  the  dark 
mysteries  of  the  delicate  art  of  black-mailing. — 
We  saw  her  displaying  throughout  the  progress 


138 


IMTSTIC   ROMANCES   OF   THE  BLUE   AND  THE   GREY. 


of  the  aflair  the  most  unwavering  firmness  and 
disdainful  indignation  —  proud,  haughty,  injured, 
tender-hearted,  dehcate  creature ! 

As  Milton  i^ictured  the  scornful  and  lofty 
bearing  of  fallen  Satan,  on  some  occasions  in  the 
horrible  realms  of  the  Infernal,  so  ai^pears  this 
most  wonderful  woman — still  the  more  wonder- 
ful when  better  known — while  the  gorgeous 
preparations  "were  in  progress,  and  when  they 
were  completed.  And  as  on  tlie  last  evening,  near 
the  hour  of  the  ceremonies,  she  is  receiving  her 
guests,  she  beams  with  radiant  smiles;  her  nat- 
ural imperiousness  shows  no  indication  of  having 
descended  from  the  heights  of  its  unrivaled  pres- 
tige in  the  brilliant  past,  when  she  was  the 
envied,  matchless  young  queen  of  fashion,  society, 
and  beauty.  Now,  as  then,  she  seems  the  perfect 
picture — the  veritable  quintescence  of  earthly 
happiness.  So  completely  is  she  mistress  of  her 
faculties,  and  of  the  mysterious  art  of  dissem- 
bling, that  it  would  baffle  the  most  astute  effort  of 
the  skillful  analytical  reader  of  human  nature 
to  detect  in  her  face,  her  actions,  or  her  voice 
the  faintest  trace  of  that  secret  devouring  flame 
of  cruel  and  undying  torment  ever  raging  in  her 
breast,  permitting  her  no  peace  by  day  and  in- 
cessantly haunting  her  dreams  by  night. 

Still,  however,  with  untiring  perseverance  and 
an  indomitable  will,  well  worthy  the  grandest 
cause  in  this  world,  has  she  pursued,  still  is  pur- 
suing, and  ever  purposes  to  pursue,  her  ambitious 
schemes^  until  the  last  design  is  perfected  and  ac- 
complished. She  will  not  hesitate  as  to  the  means 
employed.  She  will  grasp  and  use  them  with 
unscrupulous  indifference  of  the  bitter  affliction 
and  the  cruel  despair  she  forces  other  and  unsus- 
pectingly innocent  hearts  to  endure.  For  three 
of  her  own  beautiful  and  most  amiable  daughters 
she  has  conceived  and  modeled  destinies  of  life 
bitterly  disappointing  to  them,  dooming  their 
days  o^earthly  existence  to  elegant  yet  still  pitiful 
wretchedness. 

She  has  broken  her  husband's  once  fondly  do- 
ting heart.  To  what  infamy  she  has  decended  in 
the  dubious  transactions  with  Van  Allen  and 
Mortimer,  conjecture  may  never  divine ;  and  where 
she  will  stop  in  her  des[)erate  endeavors  to  blast 
the  happiness  and  the  fondly  cherished   hopes  of 


Lawrence  Plea^ington  and  EfRe  Edelstein.  we  in- 
voluntarily shudder  to  contemplate. 

This  is  the  woman,  envied,  adored,  worshiped, 
to  whom  the  most  exclusive  in  tlie  grand  metro- 
pohs  would  deem  the  permission  to  pay  per- 
sonal homage  a  highly  honored  privilege.  Thus 
she  is  viewed  by  the  hosts  of  the  social  eclat 
thronging  around  her  on  the  evening  referred  to, 
as  bidden  guests  to  tlie  marriage  feast.  So  it  is 
with  many,  ah,  many,  in  this  world,  who  conceal 
beneath  a  smiling  countenance,  a  false  and  decep- 
tive heart ! 

In  their  private  boudoir,  are  closeted  the  three 
eldest  daughters — the  legitimate  victims  of  a 
mother's  cruel  intrigue. 

Cassandra:  "Well,  girls,  you  appear  charming 
in  your  witching  bridal  robes.  Are  you  in 
reality  as  brilliant  as  you  seem?  For  me,  I  feel 
as  if  about  to  participate  in  the  solemnities  of 
a  funeral.  From  my  heart  I  wish  this  was,  in- 
stead of  my  wedding  robe,  my  burial  shroud." 

Beatrice:  "I  cry  'Amen,'  Cassandra.  We  are 
a  fated  trio.  Alas,  for  the  result  of  our  ill-starred 
lives!  I  have  always  clung  to  the  delusion  that 
this  would  never  be." 

Rosalind  :  "  Ah,  my  unhappy  sisters,  how  truly 
your  feehngs  and  sentiments  harmonize  with  my 
own. — To  think  of  Eva, — how  I  would  envy  her 
going  to  the  altar  as  she  goes,  with  heart  and 
hand  bestowed  together,  if  it  would  better  our 
lots!  She  will  fulfill  her  destiny  with  credit  and 
honor,  the  sweet  child  of  Fortune,  upon  whom 
Destiny  and  all  the  Graces  have  been  pleased 
to  smile  with  kindest  benignity." 

Cassandra:  "Poor,  suffering  father!  I  can 
never  cease  to  reproach  him  because  he  did  not 
assert  his  rightful  prerogative  as  master  of  bis 
own  house,  and  save  us ;  for  I  know  he  has  never 
approved  of  mamma's  course.  She  is  the  most 
heartless  woman  in  the  world." 

Beatrice:  "Her  equal  never  lived;  and  still 
none  know  her.  All  the  world  regards  her  as  a 
model  wife  and  mother. — As  a  modeler  of  misery, 
she  is  a  success." 

The  scene  changes  to  Mountjoy's  chamber.  He 
and  Evalina  are  together. 

Eva:  "My  poor  papa!  I  have  come  to  see 
you,  and  to  ask  your  blessing,  before  I  go  to  the 


THE  QUADRUPLE  HYMENEAL   CONSUMMATION. 


139 


church.      You  do  not  know  how  it  grieves    me 
that  you  are  not  able  to  go." 

Mountjoy:  "I  would  like  to  see  you  married, 
my  ehild,  but  I  am  glad  that  I  am  unable  to  see 
my  other  daughters  wedded  to  misery.  No  good 
will  ever  result  from  their  marriages.  Where  is 
Effie?  I  want  to  see  her,  and  ask  her  to  stay  with 
me  a  few  days.  I  shall  be  very  lonely  when  you 
are  gone.  " 

Eva:  "Effie  and  mamma  have  quarreled  con- 
cerning Arnold,  and  she  will  not  be  here.  I  am 
very  sorry  about  it." 

Mountjoy:  "Poor  Effie!  God  alone  knowsthebit- 
ter  trials  which  she  may  be  doomed  to  experience." 

Eva:  "Papa,  Orlando  and  I  are  decided 
to  remain  with  you,  and  afford  you  all  the  com- 
fort we  can,  in  lieu  of  a  bridal  tour.  I  Avanted 
to  do  this,  both  to  save  the  expense  and  to  be 
near  you,  to  minister  to  your  wants;  and  he  con- 
sented willingly  to  botli  features  of  my  proposi- 
tion. We  will  stay  with  you  as  long  as  you 
need  our  services." 

Mountjoy:  "May  God  bless  you,  my  loving  and 
dearly  beloved  daughter,  as  fervently  and  as  truly 
as  I  do  now ;  and  may  he  prosper  and  shield  you 
in  all  the  vicissitudes  of  your  journey  of  hfe,  from 
all  harm  with  which  its  many  dangers  may 
threaten  you." 

Eva:  "Thank  you,  my  dear  papa!  Kiss  me 
now,  and  put  your  arms  around  me  once  more, 
while  I  fold  mine  lovingly  about  your  neck. 
Now  then,  if  you  were  well,  and  no  longer  a 
victim  of  sickness  and  sorrow,  I  should  be  happy. 
God  bless  and  comfort  you,  my  papa.  Orlando 
and  I  will  steal  away  from  the  festive  throng, 
and  come  to  you  a  while,  after  we  return  from 
the  church." 

Mountjoy:  "That  is  enough,  my  daughter. 
You  may  keep  them  waiting  for  you.  Good- 
by  until  you  return." 

Here  alone,  confined  to  his  room,  languishes 
the  rapidly  sinking,  neglected  husband,  who  for 
twenty-five  years  has  supplied  his  wife  with  all 
the  elegant  luxuries  that  money  could  buy  or 
heart  desire. 

Now,  since  their  stormy  mterview,  she  rarely 
ever  speaks  to  him;  and  when  she  does  speak,  it  is 
with  unkindness. 


This  true  and  noble  m,an  is  dying  by  slow, 
cruel,  torturing  degrees,  the  hopelessly  incurable 
victim  of  a  broken  heart,  caused  alone  by  his 
heartless  wife's  unfeeling  conduct. 

The  congratulations,  the  supper,  the  party, 
the  presents,  and  the  fijial  leave-takings  were 
much  the  same  as  those  ao  often  and  so  graphi- 
cally portrayed  by  master  artists,  engaged  in  pro- 
ducing pictures  of  the  bright  and  smiling  side  of 
life.  We  do  not  attempt  this.  Our  materials  are 
disappointments,  liQart-aches,  and  tears. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

THE       DARK       CONSPIRACY-. 

"  Black  was  the  minrl  that  coolly  couM  have  planned, 
Such  cruel  deeds  for  a  desperate  hand." 

—ANONYMOUS. 

Helen  Mountjoy,  Atkinson  and  Stringfehow 
are  closeted  together. 

Mrs.  Mountjoy  :  "  Now,  my  good  sons,  what  I 
wanted  to  see  you  about,  is  concerning  the  en- 
gagement between  that  conte;nptible  sharj^er, 
Pleasington,  and  Effie — the  head-strong  little  sim- 
pleton. I  could  freely  burn  that  traitor.  Cloud,  for 
not  letting  him  die,  or  for  not  finishing  his  med- 
dlesome career  in  that  bungling  execution.  Such 
trash  is  fit  only  for  gibbets  of  retaliation.  If  the 
fool  had  hung  him,  I  would  not  now  have  all  this 
trouble.  I  have  sworn  that  Effie  Edelstein 
shall  be  Arnold  Noel's  bride,  and  I  mean  to  keep 
my  oath.  This  unpromising  engagement  mu^t  be 
broken.  I  must  have  your  assistance  about  it ; 
that  is  all." 

Atkinson  :  "  Why  certainly,  dear  mother,  any- 
thing that  I  can  do  to  aid  you,  will  be  most 
cheerfully  performed.  I  do  not,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  know  your  plan,  nor  in  what  way  I  might 
promote  its  success." 

Stuingfellow  :  "  That  is  exactly  my  ticket, 
my  mother.  But  just  at  this  moment,  for  the  life 
of  me,  I  am  unable  to  see  in  what  way  either  of 
us  can  further  your  project. 

"  Now,  there  is  Silas  Worthington,  who  is  in 
the  very  position  to  render  you  all  the  service 
you  require  in  this  enterprise,  to  complete  its  sure 
and  speedy  success ;  and  his  relations  to  you  are 
the  same  as  our  own." 


140 


MYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


Mrs.  M :   "  Yes,  the  ingrate  !  he  is  under 

obligations  to  me.  It  was  solely  my  object  to 
secure  this  claim  on  his  services  for  this  very  pur- 
pose,— in  order  that  they  would  be  ready  at  my 
command  whenever  the  present  crisis  might 
come, — that  I  consented,  at  his  request,  to  give 
Eva  to  Oglethrop — about  the  same  ash-cat  stripe 
as  Pleasingtou.  Now,  he  actually  laughs  at  me, 
as  he  imagines,  in  a  good  natured  way ;  and  tells 
me,  with  the  most  complacent  nonchalance,  that 
whatever  influence  he  can  command,  if  any, 
would  be  thrown  in  the  scale  against  me.  He 
means  it,  too.  I  know  the  man.  All  New  York 
cannot  turn  him.  He  never  gave  me  any  grounds, 
is  in  no  way  joledged  to  assist  me.  I  merely  ex- 
pected it  on  general  principles.  I  think  if  he 
was  not  an  utter  stranger  to  the  sense  of  the  im- 
perative demands  of  personal  gratitude  and  the 
reciprocity  of  its  obligations,  he  could  not  have 
for  one  moment  hesitated  about  the  decision  that 
my  appeal  to  him  should  have  received. 

"I  find,  from  this  instance,  as  well  as  from 
many  others,  that  one  can  never  implicitly  rely 
on  one's  friends  to  repay,  mutually,  favors  pa.st. 
But  this  case  is  simply  outrageous  and  entirely 
unpardonable."  » 

Atkinson:  "Unfortunately,  the  fact  that 
Worthington  does  not  hold  Arnold  in  very  high 
esteem,  is  the  chief  point  in  his  opposition, — you 
know  he  is  Effie's  guardian.  In  business  circles 
down-town,  I  am  sorry  to  say  Arnold  is  regarded  as 
a  very  wild  and  somewhat  dissipated  young  man." 

StRiNGFELLOW :  "  Ycs,  mother,  this  is  true;  and 
the  opinion,  I  regret,  is  but  too  Avell  grounded. 
Arnold  is  much  slyer  since  he  came  back  from 
the  navy  than  he  was  before ;  still  the  fact  is 
patent  that  he  has  not  in  the  least  improved." 

Mrs.  M :  "  Well,  this  has  nothing  to  do  with 

my  purpose.  Effie  would  influence  him  to  aban- 
don all  his  youthful  follies.  Yery  soon  he  would 
be  redeemed. 

"  Now  for  my  plan  and  its  execution,  about 
which  there  must  be  the  least  possible  delay  : — 

"  By  some  means,  Lawrence  Pleasington  must 
he  put  Old  of  the  way,  and  so  effectually  as  to  stand 
as   an  obstacle    to    my  plan  no   more.     Do    you 

UNDERSTAND  ?" 

Atkinson  :     "  Oh,  horrors — commit  murder  or 


something  little  or  no  better!  What!  Do  you 
imagine  us  capable  of  this  atrocity  ?  Never, 
never  !     We  cannot  be  parties  to  this  crime." 

Mrs.  M :  "  There  is  no  need  to  commit 

murder,  nor  any  other  crinle  of  a  more  scarlet 
hue  than  such  as  that  in  which  the  hands  of  both 
have  already  been  deeply  imbued.  Why,  my 
amiable,  virtuous,  honest  sons,  I  wonder  that  the 
angels  do  not  come  and  carry  j^ou  away  bodily 
from  this  wicked  world  I 

"What,  pray  let  me  most  earnestl}^  ask  you, 
has  Avashed  from  your  sensitive  consciences  the 
ignominious  stain  of  the  cool,  deliberate,  system- 
atic, unfeeling,  pitiless  and  cruel  robbery  of 
Gertrude  Flowers  and  her  two  little  orphan 
children?  This  without  granting  or  leaving  them 
even  the  pittance  legally  theirs,  had  the  failure 
of  Atkinson,  Flowers  &  Co.  been  legitimately 
honest;  to  say  nothing  of  the  other  creditors, 
paid  at  a  shamefully  low  percentage  of  a  com- 
promise scale,  with  their  own  money,  after  using 
it  a  year  without  interest. 

"Ah,  well  may  you  start,  and  sink  back  in  your 
seats  in  despair !  I  pity  you,  and  want  you  to 
pity  me.  I  have  not  mistaken  my  men.  You 
will  assist  me  without  another  manifestation  of 
reluctance." 

Atkinson  :  "  It  was  you,  madam,  my  mother, 
who  first  suggested  that  disreputable  affair,  or  we 
should  never  have  di'eamed  of  it." 

Mrs.  M :    "  Silence !    You   were    apt   and 

eager  scholars,  poor  whining  second  Adams,  and 
without  the  manly  firmness  to  reject  an  improper 
suggestion  from  a  woman.  Understand  me.  I 
did  that  to  get  you  in  my  power,  which  I  am 
thankful  that  up  to  this  moment  you  have  never 
given  me  occasion  to  use  against  you,  as  I  then 
feared  you  might,  in  relation  to  other  matters.  I 
hold  that  power  over  your  heads,  fully  conscious 
of  the  terror  that  it  awakens  in  your  hearts. 
From  this  moment  do  my  bidding  unmurmuringh'-, 
and  all  will  glide  smoothly  and  serenely  for  you ; 
and  you  will  find  me  as  docile  and  as  amiable  as 
a  pet  lamb.  But  cross  my  wish  with  but  the 
.■^lightest  indication  of  defiance  to  my  will,  and 
you  will  arouse  a  savagely  furious  lioness  to  the 
desperation  of  the  most  cruel  and  unmerciful 
heartlessness. 


THE  DAKK  CONSPIRACY. 


141 


"  I  shall  immediately  confer  with  Madam  Vais- 
entre,  and  learn  from  her  the  most  desirable  course 
to  be  pursued,  and  the  most  approved,  available 
and  practicable  means  to  be  employed  in  follow- 
ing it  up  to  a  successful  issue.  If  she  does  not  at 
once  know,  she  has  ample  facilities  for  ascertain- 
ing so  quietly  that  no  one  in  the  daylight  world 
will  ever  have  the  remotest  inkling  of  what  is 
transpiring  while  in  process  of  development,  nor 
how  it  was  brought  about  after  it  becomes  public 
property.  Caution  is  not  an  adequate  term  fully  to 
express  fully  the  prudent  care  I  shall  exercise  in 
covering  up  our  steps  as  we  move  along,  and  in 
making  doubly  sure  that  no  suspicious  fingers 
point  in  our  direction. 

"Now,  thus  far  the  question  is  settled.  In  due 
time  I  shall  apprise  you  of  the  parts  you  are  to 
play,  and  as  to  how  and  when  they  are  to  be  per- 
formed. The  expense  and  all  the  trouble  as  to 
details  shall  have  my  attention.     Grood-night." 

Atkinson:  "Well,  Adam,  we  are  in  a  pretty 
dilemma.  That  woman  is  desperate.  See  how 
true  is  the  proverb  of  retribution.  Ours  has  been 
so  tardy  that  we  had  almost  forgotten  that  we 
owed  it.  Now  it  is  about  to  explode  with  all  its 
long  pent-up  reserve  forces,  and  compel  us  to 
pay  the  terrible  penalty,  with  its  many  long  years 
of  ever-compounding  interest.  What  the  aggre- 
gated sum  total  may  be  ere  we  see  the  end,  my 
blood  runs  cold  at  the  bare  and  but  casual  con- 
templation. Poor,  innocent  Gertrude  Flowers! 
the  widoAv's  woes  and  the  orphans'  tears  we  have 
caused  you  and  yours — alas !  their  magnitude 
and  their  cruel  pangs  may  be  immeasurably  ter- 
rible! Uh,  Adam!  why  did  we  do  that  dark 
and  horrid  deed,  whose  legitimate  offspring  are 
now  demanding  at  our  hand  the  black  perpetra- 
tion of  perhaps  still  more  deeply  dyed  and  in- 
famous crimes  against  yet  other  innocent  and 
unoffending  hearts,  doomed  to  endure  torturing 
agonies  that  are  untold  ?" 

Stringfellow  :  "  Ah,  Ira !  regrets  are  unavail- 
ing now.  Nothing  in  this  world  'can  recall  those 
cruel  wrongs.  There  is  neither  atonement  nor 
redemption  for  us  here,  nor  hereafter. 

"  If  G-ertrude  Flowers,  or  either  of  her  children, 
or  all  three,  are  Hving,  and  I  knew  their  where- 
abouts, I  would  return  my  part  of  her  stolen  for- 


tune with  interest.  It  should  not  be  left  to  heirs 
with  Madam  Mountjoy's  blood  in  their  veins. 

"  In  our  family  relations,  also,  we  are  doomed 
to  wretchedness.  Our  young  wives  do  not  and 
never  will  love  us  ;  and  the  chances  are  that  they 
will  find  younger  men  more  congenial  to  their 
tastes,  and  love  them  clandestinely.  There  are 
a  thousand  means  by  which  our  ills  may  be  aug- 
mented and  again  multiplied." 

Atkinson  :  "  You  are  uttering  uncomfortable 
truths,  Adam.  I  wish  we  knew  the  fate  of  Mrs. 
Flowers,  or,  rather,  the  present  abiding-place  of 
her  and  her  children,  or  any  one  of  them  now 
living,  and  I  should  readily  join  you  in  making 
such  restitution  as  is  in  our  power.  If  we  could 
but  do  this,  I  should  then  defy  Madam  Mountjoy, 
and  fiatly  refuse  to  take  any  part  in  a  criminal  or 
even  unfairly  purposed  act.  Let  us  put  the  mat- 
ter in  aljle  legal  hands,  and  instruct  that  every  pos- 
sible effort  be  made  to  find  Mrs.  Flowers  or  one 
of  her  children." 

Stringfellow  :  "  All  right,  Ira,  we  will  do  this 
to-morrow,  and  find  in  the  meantime  some  pre- 
text to  procrastinate  with  the  Madam.  I  am 
thoroughly  horror-stricken  at  the  idea  of  partici- 
pating in  the  cruel  outrage  which  she  now  de- 
signs to  commit  on  poor  Pleasington,  whose  little 
finger  is  truly  worth  more  than  young  Noel's 
ignoble  heart.  Satan  would  blush  at  the  thouo-ht 
of  this  vile  atrocity." 


CHAPTER   XXXV. 

THE    BLIGHTING  WAVE  OF    NAMELESS    WOE. 

"  Oh,  Love!  no  habitant  of  earth  thou  art 

An  unseen  Seraph,  we  believe  in  thee, 
A  faith  whose  martyrs  are  the  broken  heart. 

But  never  hath  seen,  nor  e'er  shall  see 
The  naked  eye  thy  form,  as  it  sliould  be  : 

The  mind  hath  made  thee  as  it  peopled  heaven, 
Even  with  its  own  desired  phantasy. 

And  to  a  thought  such  shape  and  image  giv'n 
As  haunts  the  unquenched  soul,  parch'd,  wearied,  wrung 
and  riven."  — Bykon. 

Lawrence  Pleasington  and  a  bank-teller  are 
together  at  the  home  of  the  former. 

Bank  Clerk:  "Let  us  go  up  to  your  room, 
Lawrence,  before  we  go  out.  I  want  to  write  a 
note  and  brush  my  hair." 

Lawrence  Pleasington  :  "  All  right,  Tim,  I  too 


142 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  XSD  THE  GREY. 


Avant  to  brush  my  boot^.  Glad  you  named  it ;  I 
Avas  about  to  forget  it.'' 

They  go  at  once  up  lo  Lawrence's  room. 

Bank  Clerk  :  "  Lawrence,  I  am  very  warm  and 
thirsty.    Have  you  some  Avater  in  the  room  ?" 

Lawrence:  "  No ;  but  I  will  go  for  some  ice-water. 
Make  yourself  at  home.  I  shall  not  be  many 
minutes." 

*  H:  *  *  *  * 

Bank  Clerk:  "Ah!  that  is  indeed  refresh- 
ing.— By  the  Avay,  that  Effie  of  yours  eclipses  all 
our  belles.  You  are  most  fortunate  in  possessing 
such  a  rare  jewel." 

Lawrence:  "I  do  not  yet  possess  her,  Tim;  and 
I  have  always  heard  that  there  is  '  many  a  slip 
between  the  cup  and  lip.'  " 

Scene  changes  to  the  president's  room  in  the 
bank,  next  day. 

Chief  OF  Police:  "  Have  you  no  suspicion  as 
to  any  one  who  might  have  participated  in  the 
robbery  ?  Have  you  noticed  no  suspicious  look- 
ing parties  around  the  bank  lately  ?" 

President:  " Nothing  whatever  unusual.  We 
have  actually  no  clue,  and  no  sort  of  grounds 
upon  which  we  can  base  a  suspicion  against  any 
one." 

Chief  :  "  Well,  then,  it  is  clear  to  my  mind 
that  some  one  connected  with  the  bank  is  in  the 
party.  It  is  not  the  work  of  an  utter  stranger, 
but  of  a  person  intimately  acquainted  with  the 
building,  and  with  the  inside  of  the  bank,  even 
to  the  inmost  chamber  of  the  vaults.  Here,  sir, 
is  the  starting-point  upon  which  work  must  im- 
mediately begin,  if  you  wish  to  ferret  out  the 
crime  and  capture  the  guilty  parties,  and,  per- 
haps, recover  some  of  your  money." 

President  :  "  All  right,  sir,  that  is  what  we 
want.  Spare  neither  effort  nor  expense  that 
promises  to  reward  you  with  success.  By  all 
means  take  the  most  prompt  and  vigorous  meas- 
ures, with  every  one  connected  with  the  institu- 
tion, from  myself  down  to  the  humblest  mes- 
senger-boy." 

Chief  :  "  It  will  be  necessary  to  search  the 
dwelling  or  room  of  every  one  employed  in  the 
bank.' 

President  :   "  Stop  at  nothing,  I  tell  you,  man ; 


and   do   not   hesitate   to   begin  your  unpleasant 
work." 

The  officer  goes  outAvith  the  president,  but  re- 
turns alon«  soon. 

Chief  :  "  Is  your  name  Lawrence  Pleasingtou, 
young  man  T 

Lawrence:  "Yes,  sir,  that  is  my  name." 

Chief  :  "  I  want  you  to  take  a  little  Avalk  Avith 
me,  and  to  assist  me  someAvhat  in  seeking  a  clue 
to  the  robbery." 

Lawrence:  "All  right,  sir,  I  am  entirely  at  your 
service." 

They  go  out,  and  proceed  to  the  police  station, 
and  meet  the  president. 

Chief  :  "  This  is  the  culprit,  Mr.  President. 
— Now,  Pleasington,  you  understand  the  situation. 
You  know,  without  my  telling  you,  that  you  are 
at  police  head-quarters,  a  prisoner,  charged  with 
the  crime  of  robbing  the  bank,  your  employers — 
ungrateful  man.  The  proof  against  you  is  over- 
whelming. We  have  found  much  of  the  missing 
money  concealed  in  your  own  bed-room.  The 
very  best  thing  for  you  to  do  now,  is  to  make  a 
clean  breast  of  it,  and  thus  put  us  on  the  tracks 
of  your  accomplices,  and  the  way  to  recover  the 
balance  of  the  stolen  money.  It  Avill  go  much 
lighter  with  you  if  you  thus  assist  us.  Heaven 
itself  cannot  save  you." 

Lawrence  :  "I  am  the  victim  of  some  vile  and 
villainous  plot.  I  know  no  more  about  the  rob- 
bery than  an  unborn  babe.  Heaven  alone  may 
bear  me  witness  that  I  speak  the  truth ;  but  I 
am  innocent." 

President  :  "  Come  now,  Pleasington,  this  act- 
ing Avill  avail -you  nothing.  I  should  rather  have 
lost  all  the  missing  money  than  to  have  believed 
this  of  you.  But  of  your  guilt  there  cannot  be 
the  semblance  of  a  shadoAv  of  doubt.  It  is  as 
clear  and  positive  as  the  noonday  sun.  I  am 
utterly  dumbfounded.  I  cannot  perceive  what 
could  have  ever  possessed  you — ^you  with  a  rec- 
ord so  enviable  and  a  future  brighter  with 
promise  and  fuller  of  hope  than  that  enjoyed  by 
any  other  young  man  in  the  land,  no  matter  what 
his  family  name,  influence  and  Avcalth  might  be- 
stow upon  him.  To  think  that  you  would  stake 
all  these,  and  lose  them  in  this  infamous  game — 
an  act  immeasurably  degrading,  for  which  there 


THE  BLIGHTING  WAVE  OF  NAMELESS  WOE. 


143 


can  be  no  excuse,  and  connected  with  which 
there  cannot  be  one  single  mitigating  circum- 
stance !  Col.  Worthington  will  be  here  to-night. 
This  will  break  his  heart." 

Lawrence  :  "  If  I  was  on  the  gallows,  and  had 
but  barely  time  to  utter  three  words  before  the 
trap  would  spring,  they  would  come  in  clarion 
tones:  I  am  innocent. 

"My 'bright  future  is  what  has  caused  this 
deadly  venomous  blow  to  be  wreaked  upon  me 
with  such  mad  fury.  I  can  see,  from  the  light 
in  which  the  case  has  been  presented  to  my 
mind,  that  I  am  doomed  to  the  most  miserable 
and  wretched  fate  to  which  flesh  and  blood  is'ever 
consigned  without  the  shadow  of  a  chance  to 
escape  from  its  hideous  consequences.  I  see  the 
ruins  of  all  past  and  the  wrecks  of  future  hopes 
commingling  in  one  Avild  mass  impelled  by  chaotic 
velocity,  whirling  downward  into  the  fathomless 
gulf  of  black  and  ignominious  oblivion.  I  am 
powerless.  Do  unto  me  as  you  may,  at  the  end 
I  will  be  the  same  unchanged  and  unchangeable 
victim  of  inexplicable  circumstances,  and  shall 
be  unable  to  make  any  other  answer  but  that 
already  declared  unto  you.  I  realize  that  for  this 
world,  all  is  as  effectually  over  with  me  as  if  I  was 
guilty.  And  to  the  hard  and  cruel  decree  I  can 
but  bow  my  head  in  mute  despair." 

Chief  of  Police  :  "  Sergeant,  put  him  in  the 
sweat-box  until  the  morning.  See  that  no  one 
speaks  to  him,  and  allow  nothing  passed  to  him. 
Some  of  this  starch  must  be  gotte::  out  of  him. 

"  Now,  President,  that  is  decidedly  the  best 
acting  I  ever  met  in  my  long  and  varied  expe- 
rience; but  I  think  he  will  weaken." 

President  :  "  I  can  assure  you  that  it  troubles 
and  puzzles  me  beyond  measure.  Worthington 
is  our  only  hope  to  induce  him  to  reveal  those 
who  were  his  accomplices.  So  until  morning,  as 
far  as  I  am  able  to  judge,  there  remains  nothing 
further  to  be  done." 

Chief:  "Nothing,  sir.  You  may  now  go 
home.  I  shall  leave  no  stone  unturned  to  find  a 
clew  to  lead  me  to  the  discovery  of  the  other  pai-- 
ties.  Some  trifle  or  uncovered  foot-print  may 
unexpectedly  betray  them." 

The  next  morning  Silas  Worthington  calls  on 
poor  Pleasington. 


Worthington;  "Oh,  Lawrence,T- alas !  thou 
wretched  boy,  you  have  opened  the  flood-gates 
of  misery!  Your  poor  mother  now  lies  stark 
and  cold  in  the  icy  embrace  of  death — the  vic- 
tim of  a  broken  heart;  and  a  more  horrible  re- 
ceptacle than  the  grave  is  gaping  to  receive  you. 
I  had  intended  to  talk  severely  serious  to  you ; 
but  now  you  are  draining  your  cup  of  woe  to  its 
bitter  dregs,  I  will  spare  you  the  mortification  of 
listening  to  my  reproachful  words." 

Lawrence:  "Oh,  my  Grod!  I  can  bear  any- 
thing now. — Spirit  of  my  angelic  mother,  hover 
over  thy  poor  despairing  son ;  and  for  the  sake  of 
the  worthy  name  he  bears,  attest  unto  the  world 
that  he  is  innocent,  and  the  victim  of  some  dark 
and  mysterious  machination. — Col.  Worthington, 
I  know  your  opinion.  I  am  powerless  to  change 
it.  Speak!  Nothing  can  now  add  to  my  present 
torture." 

Worthington:  "  Wefl,  Lawrence,  I  have  ob- 
tained a  guarantee,  that,  on  condition  you  reveal 
the  whole  affair  to  me,  with  the  names  of  all  the 
parties  connected  with  it,  you  shaU  be  imme- 
diately and  unconditionally  released.  I  think 
this  best ;  for  I  >tell  you  frankly  that  nothing  else 
can  save  you  from  a  long  term  of  years  in  State 
prison." 

Lawrence:  "I  thank  you  for  your  kind  inter- 
cession; but  if  I  had  a  thousand  lives  doomed 
to  endless  imprisonment,  and  divulging  one  iota 
relative  to  the  robbery,  or  as  to  how  the  money 
got  into  my  room,  would  redeem  them  all,  I 
could  not  divulge  one  word,  because  I  know 
nothing.  On  this  point,  it  is  idle  to  talk  to  me, 
because  I  cannot  do  what  is  desired :  give  in- 
formation that  I  do  not  possess." 

Worthington  :  "  Eeflect  upon  this  after  I  am 
gone,  when  you  are  alone.  If  you  want  me,  let  it 
be  known,  and  I  will  come." 

Lawrence  :  "  I  shall  never  want  you  again,  un- 
less something  in  some  way  transpires  to  cause 
you  to  change  your  opinion.  Until  then  I  must 
bid  you  a  last  farewell." 

They  parted,  and  Worthington  joined  the 
president  of  the  bank. 

President  :  "  Well,  Colonel,  what  was  the  result 
of  your  intervieV  ?  " 

Worihington:  "Just  the  same  as  yours.     You 


144 


MYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


might  subject  him  to  the  most  cruel,  slow  torture, 
and  he  would  never  change  his  position.  He  has 
taken  his  stand  and  will  go  to  the  grave  unyielding. 

President  :  "  Well,  it  is  a  sadly  deplorable 
case." 

Worthington  soon  called  on  poor  broken- 
hearted Effie. 

Worthington:  "  Well,  Effie,  my  poor  child,  the 
chilling  winds  of  ill-favored  Fate  are  beating 
furiously  down  upon  us.  I  pity  you.  I  know  the 
cruel  blow  has  crushed  you  without  mercy." 

Effie  :  "  It  is  more  terrible  than  the  day  of 
doom.     But  tell  me  truly,  is  Lawrence  guilty  ?  " 

Worthington  :  "  Alas !  it  is  impossible  for  him 
to  be  innocent.  All  the  proof  and  the  circum- 
stances are  against  him  so  strongly  as  to  leave 
him  not  the  benefit  of  a  single  doubt.  Yet  still 
he  obstinately  denies  it,  and  maintains  that  he  is 
innocent." 

Effie  :  "  Then  my  resolution  is  taken.  I  de- 
sire to  make  my  will,  to  remain  sealed  Avhile  I  live ; 
then  I  am  going  at  once  into  the  deepest  seclusion 
of  a  convent,  there  to  pass  my  remaining  days — 
a  broken-hearted,  hope-bereft  woman." 

Worthington  :  "  Effie,  that  is  madness.  I  im- 
plore you  do  not  throw  away  your  brightly  prom- 
ising young  life  so  rashly !  " 

Effie  :  "All  words  are  idle.  The  sun  of  my 
life  has  gone  down !  The  world  shall  not  mock 
me  to  my  face.  If  Lawrence  is  false  and  base, 
who  in  this  world  can  I  trust  and  esteem  as  noble 
and  true  ?  That  fair  young  brow,  the  gem-like 
emblem  of  honest  purity ;  that  ever  temperate 
and  exemplary  life,  so  nobly  brave  and  faithful  to 
his  suffering,  bleeding  country  on  whose  altar 
his  youthful  blood  flowed  so  freely,  now  degraded 
and  blackened  with  the  indelible  stain  of  the 
basest  ignominy !  After  this,  what  is  there  in  the 
world  for  me  to  trust  ?  He  was  my  ideal  of  manly 
purity  and  excellence.  Before  my  mind  no  other 
can  ever  rise  to  the  same  exalted  eminence  upon 
which  I  beheld  him  stand. 

"  My  friend,  be  good  to  me  now,  and  accord 
my  wish  without  delay;  because  this  night  I  am 
resolved  to  pass  to  my  living  tomb,  whence  I 
shall  never  emerge  again,  until  I  am  borne  out  to 
the  silent  church-yard.  This  is  the  consecration 
of  my  plighted  vows,  the  proof  of    my  abiding 


constancy,  and  the  test  of  my  fidelity  and  undy- 
ing devotion." 

Late  this  same  evening,  in  the  deepening  gloom 
of  his  lonely  prison-cell,  there  came  to  poor  Law- 
rence Pleasington  a  letter,  which  ran  as  follows : 

"June  — ,  1865. 
"  Maj.  Lawrence  Pleasington. 

''''My  lost  Friend: 
"  When  we  said  good-night,  so  gay  and 
cheerful,  the   last   time,  how  little  we   dreamed 
that  it  was  for  evermore  ! 

"Oh,  Lawrence,  that  we  have  lived  to  see  the 
light  of  this  day,  so  bitterly  fraught  with  hopeless 
disappointment  and  irremediable  wretchedness! 
What  shall  I — what  can  I  say  to  you  ? 

"A  blinding  flash  of  lightning  and'  deafening 
peal  of  thunder  from  a  serenely  cloudless  sky, 
could  not  have  so  shocked  and  surprised  me  as 
did  the  cruel  tidings  of  the  terrible  fate  that  had 
overtaken  you — a  fate  a  thousand  times  more 
dreadful  than  the  mof^t  horrible  death — the  death- 
knell  of  all  our  hopes, — the  direful  force  that  has 
cruelly  severed  our  hopes  forever. 

"  I  know  what  unutterable  agonies  you  are 
suffering,  and  pity  you  from  the  depths  of  my 
soul.  Beyond  this  point  I  cannot  go — am  power- 
less to  help  you. 

"  The  dark  mystery  which  has  overwhelmed 
you  is  between  you  and  your  God,  where  I  fear 
it  must  remain. 

"You  are  in  prison,  as  you  may  be  doomed  to 
remain  for  many  long  and  weary  years.  I  also 
am  going  to  a  convent  prison.  This  is  the  strong- 
est proof  I  can  afford  you  of  my  faithful  adher- 
ance  to  my  phghted  vows  and  constant  devotion  to 
yourself.  This  ma}^  prove  an  empt}'-  source  of 
consolation;  but  it  is,  under  the  existing  circum- 
stances, all  that  I  can  render  you.  While  your 
life  is  dark  and  cheerless,  embittered  with  the 
gall  of  despair,  you  shall  know  that  I  am  not 
bright  and  joyous  amid  the  giddy  and  madden- 
ing whirl  of  the  fickle,  flattering  and  false  social 
world.  I  will  not  accept  its  smiles  nor  give  it 
mine. 

"  I  should  call  and  see  you,  but  think  it  better 
for  us  both  that  I  remain  away,  as  I  am  going 
into  the  convent  to-night. 


THE  BLIGHTING  WAVE  OF  NAMELESS  WOE. 


Ul 


"  Words  fail  me.  I  cannot  express  what  I  feel. 
Bear  your  trying  afflictions,  your  cruel  hardships 
and  hopeless  fate  with  Christian  fortitude  and 
resignation.  At  best,  our  days  would  have  been 
transient  and  comparatively  few,  and,  perhaps,  far 
less  blissful  than  we  anticipated.  Be  that  as  it 
might  have  been,  we  now  know  that  to  us  the 
realization  of  that  happy  day-dream  anticipation 
is  ove'-,  blighted, — forever  gone. 

"  Let  us  live  for  the  hereafter,  and  strive  to  meet 
again  in  the  great  and  ever-enduring  Unknown. 
God  help  and  bless  you. 

"  Until  we  have  passed  over  the  dark  river — 
Farewell. 

"Your  sj^npathetic  friend, 

"  Effie  Edelstein." 

Two  days  later,  in  the  retirement  of  her  exile 
and  within  the  pure  and  sacred  precincts  of  the 
convent  of  the  Blessed  Cross  of  Mercy,  the  heart- 
stricken,  world-weary  Effie  received  the  following 
answer  to  her  letter  : 

"  County  Prison,  June  — ,  1865. 
"  Miss  Effie  Edelstein. 

"  My  lost  Love: 
"  The  last  and  only  consolation  I  shall  ever 
know  in  this  world,  reached  me  last  evening  in 
your  tenderly  kind  and  dehcately  comforting  let- 
ter, for  which  I  thank  you  a  thousand  times  more 
than  pen  can  write  or  tongue  could  tell. 

"You  do  not  unfeelingly  reproach  me.  The 
tenoT-  of  your  letter  satisfies  me  that  you  at  least 
hope  I  am  innocent. 

"Circumstances  that  are  utterly  dumbfounding 
and  unanswerable  are  against  me.  All  the  world 
will  be  forced  to  beheve  me  guilty.  But,  my  lost 
Effie,  before  G-od,  in  the  name  of  our  pure  and 
ever  constant  love,  and  in  the  name  of  my  angelic 
mother,  I  solemnly  declare  to  you,  in  the  sad  and 
bitter  cadence  of  an  eternal  farewell, — the  verit- 
able breathing  of  my  dying  words  to  you,  my 
unhappy  darling — that  of  this  crime  I  am  as  in- 
nocent as  the  angels  in  Heaven.  That  I  cannot 
prove  it,  is  my  more  than  cruel  misfortune,  not 
my  fault.  With  the  world  it  is  just  the  same 
as  if  I  was  guilty,  but  not  with  my  conscience, 
my  God,  and  my  poor  Effie,  who  is  taking  upon 
herself  a  cross  of  self-denial  almost  as  burden- 
10 


some  and  as  physically  severe  as  that  which  I 
shall  be  forced  to  bear.  I  should  have  wished 
this  otherwise,  and  that  you  might  yet  be  happy, 
if  that  was  possible.  But  now  I  know  it  is  too 
late  to  entreat  you  to  pursue  a  different  course. 
You  have  already  taken  the  step,  from  which  all 
the  world  could  not  induce  you  to  recede.  You 
know  your  heart  and  feelings,  which  have  deter- 
mined you  to  banish  yourself  from  the  world.  I 
pity  you,  my  darling.  But  for  your  sake,  the 
blow  would  not  be  altogether  so  terribly  crushing 
as  it  now  is. 

"  Yes,  my  Effie,  my  hfe  shall  be  ever  pure  and 
blameless.  I  will  live  for  you  and  Heaven,  where 
I  hope  we  may  meet  again.  Always  remember 
and  pray  for  me.  My  thoughts  will  cling  to  you 
until  their  forcp  is  stilled  in  death. — Farewell. 
"Your  unhappy  friend, 

"  Lawrence  Pleasington." 

Thus  parted  these  two  devoted,  young,  and  lov- 
ing hearts.  How  could  Heaven  permit  them  to 
become  the  victims  of  this  hard  and  cruel  fate  ? 
Was  it  the  doom  of  retribution  pronounced  against 
the  third  and  fourth  generations,  that  they  had 
inherited ;  which  had  been  handed  down  to  them 
as  a  legacy  from  wicked  forefathers,  whose  crim- 
inal bones  had  been  sleeping  beneath  the  snows 
of  two  hundred  winters,  far  away  beyond  the  At- 
lantic's blue  and  sleepless  tide  ?  The  mysterious 
echoes  of  ages,  wafted  from  those  distant  shores, 
must  answer. 

Against  poor  Pleasington  the  most  speedy,  vig- 
orous, and  unrelenting  prosecution  was  waged, 
until  he  was,  in  due  form  of  law,  pronounced 
guilty. 

Poor,  brave,  noble  young  man,  what  a  demoni- 
acal echo  that  one  terrible  word  made  in  the  grim 
and  breathless  silence  of  the  dreary  old  Court- 
room and  its  adjacent  corridors,  as  it  fell  in  stern 
and  pitiless  tone  from  the  lips  of  the  jury's  fore- 
man !  The  handsome  young  soldier,  care-worn, 
haggard  and  pale  from  the  terrible  ordeal  through 
which  he  has  lately  passed,  stands  forth  before 
the  bar  of  the  Court,  to  hear  the  sealing  notes  of 
his  doom. 

He  had  spurred  his  charger  up  to  the  muzzles 
of  Jackson's  guns  at  Stone  Bridge ;  of  Col.  Cloud's 


146 


JklYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


in  the  valley  of  Virginia  and  on  the  plains  of 
Manassas ;  and  of  Hood's  on  the  field  of  Gettys- 
burg. He  had  passed  through  the  rayless  night 
of  death  in  the  North  Carolina  pine-woods,  and 
faced  her  grim  visage  at  other  points  a  thousand 
times;  had  served  his  country  long  and  well, 
where  he  could  proudly  and  defiantly  look  danger 
in  the  face;  but  how  different  now  the  nature 
of  the  menace  with  which  he  is  imperiled  I 
Alone,  and  friendless,  and  helpless,  with  the  very 
weapons  of  truth  and  justice — the  only  defense 
and  succor  that  could  have  availed  him — perverted 
and  turned  against  him.  Such  is  the  gloomy  pict- 
ure which  he  now  beholds. 

At  Stone  Bridge,  alone,  among  enemies,  with 
his  life  in  the  most  imminent  peril,  he  had  beheld 
the  youthful  face  of  Garland  Cloud  bending  anx- 
iously over  him,  and  heard  the  kind  tones  of  his 
sympathetic  voice  speaking  words  of  comfort  and 
cheer ;  and  again,  under  similar  circumstances,  he 
had  received  at  the  hands  of  Col.  Cloud  on  the 
plains  of  Manassas,  identically  the  same  treat- 
ment. Even  on  the  night  when  the  stern  pre- 
parations for  his  execution  were  going  on  around 
him,  every  possible  kindness  and  the  most  unmis- 
takable manifestations  of  sympathy  had  been  his. 
Now,  in  the  trying  crisis  of  the  present  moment, 
surrounded  by  his  own  people,  for  whom  he  had 
fought  and  bled,  he  quietly  turns  his  eyes  from 
face  to  face,  seeking  the  slightest  indications  of 
sympathy — but,  alas !  poor  boy,  in  vain. 

In  each  sternly  set  face,  he  could  clearly  read 
the  revelation,  that  every  heart  in  all  that  throng, 
then  crowding  the  room  almost  to  suffocation, 
was  desperately  steeled  against  him.  In  silence, 
he  then  listens  to  the  long  lecture  of  the  Judge, 
and  hears  his  sentence — the  last  day  the  extreme 
penalty  of  the  law  would  permit — being  pro- 
nounced against  him. 

He  IS  rushed  with  precipitancy  away  to  the 
State  prison,  where  the  harshly-grating  massive 
door  closes  behind  him,  shutting  out  the  sunhght 

of   hope — FOEEVEB. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

THE    SERIOUSLY    MISTAKEN    IDENTITY. 

"  Roll  on,  noble  rivers,  In  grandeur  and  pride; 
Waft  the  stores  of  my  country  from  every  side. 
Bring  a  full  share  of  wealth  o'er  the  wide-spreading 

sea; 
Though  comfort  and  hope,  they  be  strangers  to  me." 
—Miscellaneous. 

We  last  met  Garland  Cloud  amid  the  pitiful 
and  trying  scene  of  preparation  for  the  execution 
of  "  The  three  victims  of  retaliation,"  in  the  spec- 
tral night-shadows  of  the  North  Carolina  lowland 
piny  woods. 

About  the  same  time,  we  heard  a  conversation 
between  his  father,  Gen.  Cloud,  and  some  brother 
officers,  by  their  last  night's  bivouac  fire  at  Appo- 
mattox, from  which  we  learned  that  Garland 
dared  not  return  home. 

This  was  true.  The  daring  young  horseman 
was  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  desperate 
state  of  aff'airs  in  his  native  section,  and  knew 
too  well  the  character  of  the  men  who  had  sworn 
vengeance  against  him,  to  place  himself,  unarmed, 
in  a  position  where  they  could  get  him  in  their 
power. 

Immediately,  then,  after  Gen.  Joseph  E.  John- 
ston's surrender.  Garland  Cloud  fled  for  life;  in- 
tending to  seek  a  safe  asylum  where  he  would  be 
unknown,  in  a  Northern  State,  until  his  native 
land  could  aff"ord  him  a  more  promising  and  con- 
genial dwelling-place. 

The  first  day  he  set  foot  on  the  soil  of  the  State 
which  he  had  selected,  still  dressed  in  the  uniform 
of  a  Confederate  colonel,  he  was  arrested  by  the 
civil  authorities,  who  claimed  that  he  was  a  local 
desperado  who  had  been  committing  depreda- 
tions in  the  country,  throughout  the  war,  and 
against  whom  there  were  a  number  of  indict- 
ments standing  ready  on  the  docket,  in  order  to 
make  quick  disposition  oi  him  whenever  he  might 
be  captured. 

In  vain  did  Cloud  protest  that  they  were  mis- 
taken. His  captors  would  permit  no  explanation, 
but  told  him  bluntly  that  his  ruse,  under  the  dis- 
guise of  a  rebel  colonel,  would  not  avail  him ;  that 
his  time  had  come.     Court  was  then  in  session. 


THE  SERIOUSLY  MISTAKEN  IDENTITY. 


147 


He  passed  the  night,  heavily  shaclvled,  in  the  iron 
cage  of  the  county  jail. 

Early  the  next  morning  he  was  placed  in  the 
dock  for  trial. 

Judge:    "  Sam  Greg,  are  you  ready  for  trial?" 

Cloud  :  "  Your  Honor,  I  am  not.  I  am  not  the 
man;  which  fact  I  can  prove  by  officers  and 
soldiers — citizens  of  your  county — if  you  will  lay 
this  matter  over  a  few  days  until  they  reach  home. 
I  demand  this  in  the  name  of  equity  and  justice." 

Judge  :  "  If  that  is  the  only  ground  for  delay, 
the  trial  will  proceed.  We'  are  not  disposed  to 
grant  any  time  for  your  clan  to  come  and  break 
open  the  jail,  and  release  you.  There  are  plenty 
of  good  citizens  who  will  swear  that  you  are  the 
right  man.  If  you  are  what  you  claim — a  traitor 
and  rebel — you  deserve  the  penitentiary,  or  rather 
the  halter ;  therefore  we  cannot  go  far  astray  in 
condemning  you.  The  garb  you  wear  would  shame 
an  honest  man." 

Cloud  :  "  There  are  no  indictments  against  me 
for  treason,  sir;  and  I  deny  your  right  to  refuse 
me  a  fair  trial,  by  putting  my  liberty  in  jeopardy 
without  first  giving  me  the  time  and  opportu- 
nityto  prove  that  I  am  not  the  man  named  in  the 
indictments." 

Judge:  "Silence.  Proceed  with  the  trial. 
Have  you  any  counsel,  Greg?" 

Cloud  :  "  I  am  not  Greg.  I  defy  you  to  try  me 
as  him.  I  have  no  counsel,  and  will  not  submit 
to  this  outrage." 

Judge  :  "  We  appoint  you  to  defend  him,  Mr, 
R. ." 

The  jury  is  soon  impanelled.  Three  Dutchmen 
swear  most  positively  that  he  was  the  ring-leader 
of  the  gang  that  had  robbed  their  houses  and 
stolen  their  horses.  One  after  another  the  jury- 
men convict  him  on  three  indictments,  without 
so  much  as  even  leaving  their  seats. 

Without  a  moment's  delay  he  is  brought  to  the 
bar  of  the  Court  for  sentence,  and  in  a  sarcas- 
tically solemn  tone  the  Judge  says:  "Sam  Greg, 
if  you  have  aught  to  say  why  sentence  shall  not 
be  pronounced  against  you,  in  accordance  with 
the  verdicts  of  the  jury  rendered  againsfe  you,  say 
it  now,  or  ever  after  hold  your  peace." 

Cloud:  "I  have.  You  have  denied  me  fair 
and  impartial  justice,  manifesting  your  unblush- 


ing partiality  by  asserting  that  if  innocent  of  the 
alleged  charges,  I  was  a  halter-deserving  rebel. 
You  have  transformed  a  Court  of  justice  into  a 
stage  for  a  scene  of  ribald  mockery — a  Star-Cham- 
ber  Inquisition.  And  now  you  mock  me  with 
your  cold  formality,  when  not  even  a, voice  from 
Heaven  could  stay  your  predetermined  sentence, 
nor  abate  its  diabolical  severity. 

"  I  protest  against  it,  but  to  no  more  purpose 
than  a  feeble  swimmer,  riding  the  tempest-flying 
wave,  might  sue  for  safety.  I  hurl  back  your 
accusations  as  basely  infamous,  damnably  unjust, 
barbarously,  inhumanly  cruel;  stigmatizing  my 
life  with  an  odious  curse  that  will  warp  with  its 
obloquy,  attaint  with  its  poison,  and  freeze  with 
its  Arctic  congealment_  the  getiial  currents  of 
the  soul,  transforming  its  hghtest  burden  into 
the  unmerciful  torments  of  a  raging  hell,  that  wiU 
eternally  prey  upon  the  riven  fragments  of  the 
heart,  blotting  out  forever  the  last  gleam  of  hope. 

"May  all  the  distress,  affliction,  sorrow  and  suf- 
fering that  you  thus  cause  to  pursue  and  curse 
my  after-life,  re-act  with  undying  severity  upon 
you  and  your  posterity  forever.  Bear  witness. 
Oh,  ye  eternal  heavens!  that  I  receive  and  must 
suffer  an  unjust  penalty,  and  avenge  my  inno- 
cence." 

Judge:  "Were  your  words  appropriate,  and 
employed  in  a  worthy  cause,  they  might  move 
me  to  compassion.  The  Court  sentences  you  to 
the  fullest  extent  of  the  law — thirty  years  in  the 
Penitentiary  at  Bay  City,  and  regrets  the  want 
of  power  to  make  the  term  one  hundred  years." 

On  board  the  train,  bound  toward  his  prison 
home,  Cloud  hears  his  name,  and  feels,  simulta- 
neously, his  shackled  hand  firmly  pressed  in  the 
strong  grasp  of  two  powerful  hands.  Turning 
his  sad  eyes,  he  almost  involuntarily,  half  to  him- 
self, half  to  the  man  he  beholds  by  his  side,  ex- 
claims, "Lieut.  Stone!" 

Lieut.  Stone:   "Col.  Cloud!" 

For  a  moment  the  two  men  gaze  at  each  other 
in  silence,  while  the  wells  of  their  hearts  are  in 
commotion,  and  sending  up  to  the  eyes  great 
pearly  drops  of  briny  tears.  The  sheriff  and 
his  guard  posse  look  at  the  two  men,  and  then  at 
one  another, with  astounded  wonderment,  because 
they  know  Lieut.  Stone  to  be  one  among  the  first 


148 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


aud  most  influential  citizons  of  their  county. 
At  length  Stone  asks,  and  Cloud  briefly  explains, 
the  cause  of  his  present  and  most  uncomfortable 
predicament  and  future  hopelessness. 

Lieut.    S :    "  Col.   Cloud,  I  have  not  yet 

reached  home.  It  has  now  been  three  years 
since  I  have  seen  my  wife  and  babies.  I  was 
waiting  here  for  the  down  train,  and  recognized 
you  through  the  window.  But  for  you,  my  loved 
ones  would  never  see  me  more.  None  can  ever 
call  you  to  account  for  the  action  now ;  and  I  tell 
you  that  you  purposely  spared  my  life.  The  vol- 
ley fired  at  me  was  nothing  but  blank  cartridges. 
I  owe  you  a  debt  that  I  can  never  cancel ;  and 
this  is  an  unexpected  and  deplorable  opportunity 
for  me  to  manifest  the  sincerity  of  my  gratitude 
to  you,  and  to  make  one  instalment  of  its  pay- 
ment. I  will  never  settle  quietly  down  at  home, 
nor  for  one  day  cease  nor  abate  my  eflforts,  until 
you  are  a  free  man." 

Cloud:  "I  thank  God  that  they  did  not  harm 
you.  Thank  Him  all  your  days,  for  shielding  and 
delivering  you  from  that  terrible  danger.  On 
that  score  I  have  no  claim  upon  you.  Let  us  not 
talk  about  the  bitter  ordeal  of  that  ghostly  night. 
It  was  the  most  cruelly  trying  experience  of  my 
life,  to  which  even  the  gloom  of  the  present  ray- 
less  prospect  cannot  be  compared. 

"  For  charity's  ^ake,  and  in  the  naine  and  cause 
of  humanity,  if  you  desire  to  do  something  that 
will  remove  this  unjust,  remorseless  and  cruel 
burden,  beneath  whose  crushing  weight  I  am 
doomed,  alas!  to  groan  unpitied  for  so  many 
dreary  years,  I  shall  be  most  thankful  to  you,  and 
patiently  await  the  result,  never  doubting  that  it 
will  arrive. 

"  But  I  implore  you  to  suppress  my  true  name. 
In  the  name  of  that  Heaven  that  spared  your  life, 
I  entreat  you,  do  not  permit  my  name  to  become 
connected  with  this  apparent  infamy,  that  might 
be  magnified  and  misconstrued  as  it  flies  over  the 
world." 

Lieut.  S :  "  I  shall  be  more  speedy  than  you 

dream. — Upon  the  honor  of  a  soldier,  your  name 
shall  be  guarded  with  the  silence  of  the   grave." 


CHAPTER  XXXVII. 

THE    BANEFUL    SUPERNATURAL  AXD    ITS    VAXQUISHIXO 
ANTIDOTE. 

"  Oil   that  the  desert  were  my  dwelling  place. 
With  one  fair  Spirit  for  my  minister, 
That  I  might  all  forget  the   uman  race, 
And  hating  no  one,  love  but  only  her! 
Ye  Elements! — in  whose  ennobling  stir 

I  feel  myself  exalted— can  ye  not 
Accord  me  such  a  being?  Do  I  err 

In  deeming,  such  Inhabit,  many  a  spot. 
Though  with  them  to  converse  can  rarely  be  our 
lot?"  — Btkon. 

Two  MONTHS  after  we  left  Garland  Cloud  talk- 
ing to  Lieut.  Stone  on  the  train,  in  shackles,  he 
is  seated  in  the  parlor  of  an  aunt  of  his,  in  one 
of  the  most  war-wasted  districts  of  the  Old 
Dominion,  two  hundred  miles  from  his  father's 
home.  He  has  been  there  now  for  three  days. 
He  is. pale,  care-worn,  emaciated,  melancholy. 

There  is  a  military  government  in  the  State, 
which  has  stopped  Brownslow's  high-handed 
game  of  kidnapping,  and  fully  suppressed  the 
roving  bands  of  free-booters,  but  which  cannot 
control  the  rifle  of  the  secret  assassin.  This  fact 
young  Cloud  understands,  and  knows  that,  there- 
fore, he  dares  not  return  home,  nor  even  write  a 
letter. 

As  we  now  behold  him.  he  has  a  fair  suit  of 
clothing  on  his  back,  and  one-half  dollar  in  his 
pocket. 

It  is  night.  All  the  members  of  the  family 
have  retired  except  Fannie,  a  bright  little  fairy- 
like maiden  of  less  than  twenty  summers.  She 
is  sitting  in  silence,  gazing  most  intently  into 
the  gloomy  face  of  her  cousin,  but  at  length  speaks. 

Fannie:  " Now,  cousin  Garland,  you  promised 
to  tell  me  to-night  why  you  are  so  melancholy; 
and  I  am  all  impatience  to  know  what  heavy 
sorrow  or  malady  is  oppressing  you  so  cruelly 
that  the  woeful  image  of  your  face  causes  tears 
— involuntary,  spontaneous  tears — to  come  into 
my  eyes." 

Cloud  :  "  Why,  my  sweet  coz,  in  my  tender 
youth  I  was  wedded  to  misfortune.  My  bride 
was  the  then  young  and  beautiful  Confederacy 
Avhose  deep  crimson-dyed  grave,  where  I  beheld 
her  ghastly  remains  buried,  to  moulder  down 
to  obhvion's  darkest  shade,  left  me  a  bankrupt  in 


THE  BANEFUL  SUPERNATURAL  AND  ITS  ANTIDOTE. 


149 


spirit — an  orphan  of  the  heart.  The  companions 
of  my  youth  are  all  quietly,  peacefully  sleeping 
on  distant  battle-fields.  Why  was  I  left  for  a 
sadder  fate  ?  Why  did  the  dread  missile  of  death 
seek  only  my  enfeebled  arm?  Oh  that  it  had  in 
mercy  shattei'ed  my  body  and  stilled  my  proud 
heart  while  it  yet  beat  buoyant  with  youth  and 
hope,  leaving  a  spotless  name  with  the  'unnum- 
bered dead. !  Then  I  would  not  now  be  nameless 
forevermore.' 

"You  conjure  me  to  look  at  the  bright  side. 
How  can  I,  all  being  but  darkness  ?  To-morrow 
I  leave  you  and  all  brightness,  for  many,  many 
weary  days." 

Fannie:  "Alas!  what  a  deep-cast  gloom  over- 
shadows you.  But  pray  stay  with  us.  Do  not 
^•o  forth,  weak,  feeble,  despondent.  Tarry  until 
invigorating  strength  and  reviving  spirits  return 
once  more.  I  will  sing  for  you;  cheer  you  with 
fantastic  pictures  of  fairy-land  romance;  build 
air-castles  in  some  imaginary  vale  of  Vaucluse, 
^vhere  the  zephyrs  are  laden  with  fragrant  per- 
fume dispelled  by  orange-blossoms,  and  odorif- 
erous with  the  magnolia's  exhalations. — But,  pray, 
whither  are  you  going?" 

Cloud:  "To  this  dream-land  you  would  pict- 
ure, did  it  exist.  I  don't  know,  coz;  the  situation 
is  not  clear  to  me.  But  it  is  so  late  that  we  must 
say  good-night." 

Fannie:  "Good-night,  cousin  Garland.  May 
your  sleep  be  refreshing  and  your  dreams  far 
brighter  than  your  thoughts." 

Cloud  :  "  Good-night,  little  coz ;  sweet  slumbers 
and  bhssful  dreams  to  you. 

"Nature's,  own,  joyous,  happy  child — she  is 
gone.  Her  fairy  foot-falls  are  receding;  now 
they  die  away  in  the  distant  hall,  and  I  am  alone, 
as  I  must  ever  be ;  guiltless,  yet  still  a  pardoned 
wretch.  Alas!  the  deep  thralldomof  that  hapless 
curse !  My  heart  sickens,  my  brain  reels  at  its 
contemplation.  I  would  have  died  ere  it  ex- 
pired; but  what  have  I  gained  by  my  release 
from  it?  A  hopeless,  life-long  misery,  an- 
guish, sorrow,  despair — and  what?  Or  soon, 
or  late — death." 

Garland  Cloud  sits  in  the  rocking-chair,  head 
bowed  down  upon  his  breast,  under  the  mystic 
influence    of    some    strangely  potent   spell,  half 


sleep,  half  trance.  Evidently  the  same  Avhich 
creeps  ujjon  mortal  flesh,  when  a  vision  from  the 
Unknown  comes  to  the  immortal  spirit  inhabiting 
the  frail,  weak  body  of  mortal  man.  And  that 
such  visions  do  come,  both  from  the  celestial  and 
infernal  worlds,  either  in  mild  and  less  percep- 
tible, or  strong  and  more  overpowering  currents 
of  spiritual  electricity,  who  of  rational  intelli- 
gence can  doubt,  and  at  the  same  time  accept 
the  doctrine  of  that  still  small  voice  of  ever 
admonitory  warning,  speaking  to  the  soul  of 
danger  and  of  death  ?  And  that  other  doctrine 
of  the  alluring,  beguiUng,  menacing,  threatening 
wiles  of  Satan,  tempting  man  to  sin — sometimes 
in  a  mild  and  almost  imperceptible  guise  of  seem- 
ing modesty  and  abashed  timidity  ;  then  again 
in  his  hideous  form,  almost  perceptible  to  the 
naked  eye,  and  speaking  in  a  voice  almost  audi- 
ble to  the  natural  ear? — Thus  he  appears  and 
speaks  to-night  to  Garland  Cloud,  whose  con- 
science has  begun  already  to  transform  him  into 
a  moral  coward. 

A  combined  force  of  strangely  ordered  circum- 
stances has  conspired  to  induce  him  to  assume 
the  mask.  This  brave,  frank,  generous,  noble 
spirit,  that  had  quailed  before  no  mortal  danger  • 
valued  and  esteemed  by  friends  as  an  ideal  self- 
educated  youtlif ul  officer ;  and  respected  by  ene- 
mies who  knew  him,  for  his  magnanimous  hu- 
manity, has  hesitated,  wavered,  recoiled  before  a 
moral  social  duty :  the  duty  of  announcing  openly, 
frankly,  and  fearlessly  to  his  friends  and  to  the 
world,  if  necessary,  just  what  had  befallen  him,^^ 
and  how  it  had  occurred.  Instead  of  this  he 
took  refuge  behind  the  miserable  subterfuge  of 
concealment — that  shuffling  make-shift  of  curse- 
breeding  falsehood — the  most  prolific  source  of 
social  hope-  and  happiness-destroying  damnation 
that  ever  lays  hold  of  weak,  irresolute  humanity 
with  its  heavy  and  merciless  hand.  After  its 
fiendish  grasp  is  once  securely  fixed,  no  earthly 
power  can  ever  force  it  to  relax. 

At  first  this  dark  subterfuge  is  presented  Avith 
graceful  seemliness.  Its  obliging  convenience  is 
usually  gratefully  accepted,  owing  to  the  momen- 
tary annoyance  or  embarrassment  that  is  dis- 
tressing or  threatening  the  hapless  victim.  This 
small  eiTor  is  lonely  behind  its  great  veil  of  con- 


150 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


cealment  and  sternly  demands  company;  and 
sooner  or  later  is  satisfied,  until  at  length  that 
bosom  becomes  a  groaning,  living,  earthly  hell. 
This  is  of  a  nature  so  horrible  that,  could  all 
such  victims  at  the  same  time  utter  their  doleful 
shrieks  and  waUs  of  stifled  agonies,  w^ith  the 
shrillness  that  the  heart  would  send  them  forth 
to  pierce  the  startled  air,  nothing  ever  has 
occurred  since  the  flood,  and  never  may  occur 
again,  until  the  av^ful  grandeur  of  the  Day  of 
Judgment  bursts  upon  the  earth,  that  would  create 
such  soul-  moving  lamentations. 

It  is  this  that  drives  the  proud,  hard-pressed 
merchant  into  the  inextricable  entanglements  of 
the  interminable  labyrinths  of  prevarication,  ulti- 
mate crime  and  disgrace, — surely  crim.e,  when- 
ever he  contracts  obligations  under  the  cloak  of 
misrepresentations  or  concealment  as  to  the  pre- 
cariousness  of  his  affairs,  when  he  knows  facts, 
that  if  known  to  his  creditor,  the  accommodation 
wpuld  be  withheld.  Morally,  there  is  no  differ- 
ence between  the  concealment  and  the  false  rep- 
resentation and  little  between  either  and  down- 
right robbery. 

It  is  this  concealment  of  some  indiscretion  or 
other  disreputable  episode  in  the  lives  of  people, 
and  the  perpetual  dread  that  they  will  become 
known,  that  renders  such  lives  more  intolerable 
than  the  publication  of  their  concealed  chapters 
could  possibly  make  them.  It  is  the  murderer's 
sleepless  terror  and  flight,  when  naught  but  the 
accusing  conscience  pursues. 

"We  deal  with  this  question  only  in  the  rela- 
tions that  it  bears  to  .his  life  and  its  temporal 
vveal  or  woe.  This  is  a  feature  of  visible,  tan- 
gible, to  many  of  but  too  truly  well-known,  real 
existence,  needing  the  light  of  no  revelation  to 
make  it  clear  ;  and  it  defies  skepticism. 

It  is,  beyond  any  question,  the  immortality  of 
man  at  which  the  Infernal  powers  aim;  but  in 
the  mortal  relations  this  direful  influence  works 
at  the  same  time  untold  ills.  To  combat  this,  is 
our  bounden  duty  and  special  province ;  while  the 
other  belongs  to  the  ordained  man  of  God. 

Apparition  of  Satan:  "Mortal  of  sin  and 
sorrow,  list  and  dream  !  Thy  shame  shall  folloAV 
thee,  magnified,  to  credible  guilt.  With  this  for 
their  weapons,  thy  envious,  unsated  enemies  shall 


marshal  against  and  pursue  thee  with  secret 
obloquy,  assailing  thee  in  high  or  low  places; 
shall  undo  thy  prospects  and  turn  thy  hopes  to 
dust,  driving  thee  to  pangs  and  extremities  to 
which  the  present  is  thy  unreached  Paradise. 
Thou  shall  not  escape,  save  by  defying  thy 
fast-breeding  ills  in  a  courageous  flight  from 
an  intolerable  existence.  Be  wise  :  or  suffer,  and 
drag  untold  numbers  down  with  thee  to  wretched- 
ness." 

Cloud:  "Have  I  slept !  What  terrible  visions 
have  haunted  me,  more  vividly  real  than  if  under 
the  noonday's  sun!  Misery,  ruin,  and  all  the 
inconceivable  woes,  real  or  imaginary,  in  the 
hard  decree  of  earth-born  affliction !  It  will  be 
thus.  And  is  there  no  escape  ?  No,  none !  And 
what  can  be  worse  than  the  eternal  dread  of 
this — but  the  reality.  Oh,  horrors !  To-morrow 
I  will  say  adieu  to  this  hospitable  roof,  walk 
away,  and  quietly  end  it  all  in  the  placid  water 
alcove  the  dam  of  the  forge.  What  misery  this 
would  cause  poor  Fannie  and  the  family !  But 
perchance  they  will  never  know  it.  To-morrow 
night  I  know  not  what  may  be." 

Early  the  next  morning  Cloud  met  his  little 
cousin,  wlien  the  following  conversation  took 
place : 

Fannie:  "I  am  provoked,  cousin  Garland,  that 
they  did  not  call  me  in  time  to  breakfast  with 
you.     I  have  just  finished  my  breakfast." 

" Cloud  :  "I  was  waiting  for  you.  I  have  bid 
;iunty  and  the  boys  farewell,  and  now,  little  coz, 
comes  the  last  pang:  I  must  saygood-by  to  you." 

Fannie:  "But  you  cannot  shake  me  ofiF  so 
lightly.  I  shall  wander  down  the  lane  and  over 
the  bridge  with  you.  I  have  much  to  sa}' 
to  you  before  farewell.  Now,  why  that  look  of 
disappointment?  Don't  you  want  my  company, 
or  do  you  dread  my  lecture,  or  whatever  you 
term  it?" 

Cloud:  "Neither.  Would  I  could  ever  have 
such  company  and  counsel." 

Fannie:  "Cousin  Garland,  this  despondency 
shames  your  nature  and  name,  that  never  flinclied 
or  recoiled  before  mortal  hardship,  privation,  or 
danger. 

"  Look  now,  on  your  distressed,  poverty-stricken, 
ruined  country,  the  same  land  that  you  buckled 


THE  BANEFUL  SUPERNATURAL  AND  ITS  ANTIDOTE. 


151 


on  your  armor  and  drew  your  sword  so  many 
times  to  defend,  now  defenseless  and  helpless. 
See  the  desolate  homes,  the  bleak  and  solitary 
chimneys  standing  as  grim  monuments  of  war- 
wasting  destruction,  and  your  fallen  comrades' 
widows  and  orphans,  all  appealing  to  you,  in 
mutely  silent  yet  solemn  eloquence,  to  be  your- 
self again;  to  be  brave  as  of  yore,  and  lend  your 
aid  to  heal  their  ghastly  wounds. 

"  The  energy  and  brain  power  tha^  could  work 
(he  rustic  mountain-boy  from  the  ranks  to  the 
command  of  a  thousand  brave  men,  can  do  some- 
thing in  the  peaceful  battles  of  life,  when  the  cry 
for  help  is  so  stern  and  pressing. 

"  You  say  that  had  you  been  five  years  older  you 
would  now  be  famous ;  and  that  you  would  rather 
have  Jackson's  name  than  a  thousand  years  of 
life.  Jackson  was  never  so  truly  glorious  amid 
the  wildest  shouts  of  his  victorious  legions  as  I 
would  be  now  were  I  a  man,  and  that  man  you, 
m  the  struggle  to  redeem  my  war-blighted  coun- 
try from  the  thralldom  of  misery  hovering  over 
its  blue  hills,  once  so  verdant,  and  its  magic 
vales,  once  so  fruitful,  like  the  grim  visaged 
Destroying  Angel.  Oh !  I  had  such  horrid  dreams 
about  you  last  night,  that  I  could  not  bear  to  see 
you  leave  without  speaking  to  you  of  all  these 
things. 

"  Now  I  am  going  to  take  your  hand  in  both 
of  mine ;  and  while  I  thus  hold  it,  I  want  you  to 
promise  me,  in  the  name  of  a  true  soldier's  sacred 
honor,  that  you  will  take  care  of  yourself,  and  do 
everything  in  your  power  for  poor  Virginia,  your 
disconsolate  mother." 

Cloud:  "Little  coz,  for  your  sake,  and  in  mem- 
ory of  this  moment,  I  will  strive  to  do  my  duty." 

Fannie:  "Now  I  must  return  to  th^ house.  I 
am  glad  you  came  to  see  us.  When  shall  I  ever 
see  that  anxious,  sorrow-stricken  face  again? 

"Now,  cousin  Garland,  seal  your  promise  with 
the  kiss  of  a  cousin's  pure  love.  My  poor  cousin, 
farewell.     May  God  bless  you." 

Cloud  :  "  Little  coz,  I  cannot  say  when  we  may 
ever  meet  again.  God  bless  your  pure  httle  soul. 
Farewell." 

"Alas !  how  her  retiring  footsteps  widen  the  space 
between  us.  Now  she  disappears  over  the  brow 
of  the  hill. 


"  Nevermore  shall  my  tear-dimmed  eyes  behold 
that  graceful  form,  nor  my  ears  listen  to  the  har- 
monious cadence  of  her  enchanting  voice.  Too 
good  for  earth.  She  has  saved  me  from  a  watery 
shroud.   Adieu. 

"  Without  money  and  without  friends ;  with  an 
odium  darker  than  the  demon's  curse  to  pursue 
me,  which  I  must  strive  to  keep  silent  as  the 
tomb ;  but  with  the  secret  dread  of  its  muffled 
approach  ever  haunting,  threatening  to  crush  and 
contemn  me — an  invisible  spectral  ghost  hover- 
ing about,  shadowing  and  ever  darkening  life's 
pathway — I  go  forth  an  exile  from  the  home  of 
my  boyhood  days,  maimed  and  enfeebled  and 
oppressed  with  the  gloomy  shades  of  Futurity's 
dim  picture,  a  wanderer  on  the  devious,  cheer- 
less road  of  life.  Visions  of  youth's  dream,  fare- 
well! 

"  Ever  ringing  in  my  ears  must  be  the  vibrating 
and  endless  echo  of  that  one  admonitory  word, 
Duty  !  duty  I  duty  I 

Oh  that  I  may  never  disobey  it,  nor  its  stern 
charge  forget!" 

"Once  more  upon  Life's  ocean,  yet  once  more; 

May  the  waves  bound  beneatla  rae  as  a  steed 
That  knows  his  rider. — Welcome  to  their  roar — 

Swift  be  their  guidance  whereso'er  it  lead, 
Though  the  strained  mast  should  quiver  as  a  reed ; 

And  the  rent  canvas  fluttering  strew  the  gale — 
Still  must  I  on,  for  I  am  as  a  weed. 

Flung  from  the  rock  on  Ocean's  foam  to  sail 
Where'er  the  surge  may  sweep,  the  tempest's 
breath  prevail." 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 

THE      CHANGING    WIND     AND     TIDE. 

"  In  the  desert  a  fountain  is  springing— 
In  the  wide  waste  there  is  a  lone  tree — 
In  the  solitude  a  bird  is  singing. 
That  speaks  to  my  spirit  of  thee." 

— Bykon. 

The  fifth  day  after  Garland  Cloud  parted  with 
his  cousin  Fannie,  he  is  at  the  railroad  depot  of 
an  important  Virgiania  grain -shipping  town,  one 
hundred  miles  from  the  residence  of  his  aunt; 
a  distance  which  he  had  traversed  on  foot. 

This  is  a  section  of  the  State  where  he  is  a 
stranger,  a  county  in  which  he  believes   there 


152 


MYSTIC  EOIVIANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AlsD  THE  GREY. 


is  not  one  person  who  knows  him — the  reason 
that  induced  him  to  wend  liis  way  in  that  dh-ec- 
tion.  He  has  just  reached  the  place,  and  is  both 
tired  and  hungry. 

In  ten  minutes  after  his  arrival  a  passenger 
train  steams  up  to  the  depot.  There  is  quite  a 
large  crowd  on  the  platform,  hurrying  to  and  fro. 
Cloud  rises  from  the  box  upon  which  he  was 
seated,  and  slowly,  and  indifferently,  and  aim- 
lessly saunters  down  the  platform,  and  mingles 
with  the  tlii'ong.  As  yet  he  has  spoken  to  no  one. 
nor  has  any  one  spoken  to  him. 

Just  now  he  meets  Avith  an  incident  as  unex- 
pectedly as  if  it  had  been  a  tangible  spirit  in  the 
broad  light  of  day;  an  incident  such  as  often 
wholly  revolutionizes  the  lives  of  people,  and 
such,  too,  as  are  occurring  somewhere  every  day — 
events  that  cool,  dispassionate,  non-enthusiastic 
persons,  as  well  as  the  far  more  numerous  rabble — 
which  might  with  probably  greater  propriety  be 
styled  "the  happy-go-lucky"  class — regard  as 
being  entirely  fortuitous,  purely  accidental. 

But  these,  we,  with  due  deference  to  the  opin- 
ions of  others,  are  compelled  to  esteem,  view- 
ing them  in  the  light  which  is  reflected  upon 
them  from  our  stand-point,  as  clearly  unquestion- 
able and  irrefutably  established  cases  of  the  ever- 
mysterious,  all-unseen,  all-controlling,  all-dispens- 
ing hand  of  Destiny — that  Destiny  which  shapes, 
builds  up  and  overturns  our  affairs  both  great 
and  small,  despite  our  most  carefully  planned, 
cautiously  prosecuted  and  vigorously  executed 
counteracting  opposition. 

Cloud  feels  a  hand  clasp  his  arm,  and  hoars  a 
voice  pronounce  his  name  from  behind  him. 
Turning  round,  his  eyes  meet  those  of  a  well- 
known  and  familiar  war  friend;  a  man  who  has 
known  him  under  all  circumstances,  in  all  po- 
sitions where  he  had  acted  in  dark  and  bloody 
scenes ;  a  member  of  an  old  and  prominent  com- 
jnercial  firm,  composed  of  three  brothers,  domi- 
ciled in  a  large  town  less  than  a  hundred  miles 
away — a  man  in  whose  store-house  he  had  his 
head-quarters,  and  whose  brother  had  been  his 
adjutant  when  he  was  operating  against  the 
bands  of  mountain  desperadoes — a  man  at  whose 
tabic  •  he  had  taken  many  a  repast,  and  in  whose 
residence  he  had  occupied  a  room  for  a  long  time. 


when  wounded  and  unable  to  endure  the  jDriva- 
tions  of  the  lield.     This  friend  says: 

■■  Why,  Cloud,  whence  came  you?  We  heard 
that  Kirk's  band  hung  you  at  the  close  of  the 
war.  I  am  glad  to  find  you  above  the  sod,  old 
boy — the  last  man  in  the  world  that  I  expected  to 
meet  here,  but  the  very  one  I  want,  if  your  leisure 
serves  you." 

Cloud  :  "  Well,  I\Ir.  Daiio,  how  happy  I  am  to 
meet  you.  I  assure  you  it  is  a  most  agreeable  sur- 
prise. I  was  captured  at  the  close  of  the  war, 
and  have  been  free  now  only  a  few  days.  I  can- 
not go  home  for  fear  of  those  blood-thirsty  vil- 
lains. I  have  just  ai-rived  here,  and  am  so  over- 
burdened with  serving  leisui-e  that  I  am  actually 
embarrassed  to  know  how  to  dispose  of  it.  What 
can  I  do  for  a  friend,  true  and  tried  when  I  was 
wounded  and  in  distress?  " 

DaNo  :  "  W^e  want  to  buy  some  surplus  grain 
that  is  away  back  in  the  mountains,  twenty  or 
thirty  miles  from  here.  I  came  doAAii  on  this  train 
to  see  whether  or  not  I  could  arrange  with  a  mer- 
chant,orsome  one  else, to  undertake  it;  andyouare 
the  first  man  to  whom  I  have  spoken,  and  will  be 
the  only  one  to  whom  I  shall  speak,  if  I  can  agree 
with  you  to  do  the  business.  We  will  furnish  the 
money,  and  allow  you  five  per  cent.,  provided  you 
find  enough  to  make  it  an  object;  otherwise,  we 
will  recompense  you  for  your  time.  What  say 
you?" 

Cloud:  "It  is  a  bargain.  1  will  do  my  best 
for  you." 

DaNo  :  "  W^hat  luck  !  If  we  are  quick,  1  ean 
return  on  the  up  train,  now  nearly  due." 

To  Garland  Cloud  this  simple  incident  was  a 
foundation  of  adamantine  solidity  and  most-^von- 
drous  magnitude.  Upon  this  sprang  up  one  of 
the  most  extraordinarj-,  yet  vicissitudinally  check- 
ered careers  that  ever  fell  to  the  lot  of  mortal 
man  in  the  purely  civil  walks  of  life,  situated  as 
he  was  then,  and  di'iven  as  he  must  be  afterward, 
by  adverse  winds  of  envious  opposition,  and 
waste-sweeping  hurricanes  of  fell,  merciless  dis- 
aster, upon  Fortune's  dismal  rocks  of  dreary  and 
cheerless  desolation. 

The  work  wliich  he  undertook  for  his  frienn, 
then  clutched  with  the  desperation  that  the 
drowning  man  grasps  the  drifting  straw,  proved 


THE   CHANGING  WIND  AND  TIDE. 


153 


lay  more  important  than  sJtbqr  he  or  even  his 
friend  liad  anticipated.  Thio  was  undertalcen 
with  a  liope  tiiat  it  might  be  the  temporary  means 
of  warding  off  the  menacing  giiost  of -abject  want, 
liiuiiiiiating  vagrancy,  and  gnawing  hunger.  All 
of  these  he  had  acutely  felt  preying,  upon  him 
most  savagely  during  the  past  four  days,  on  the 
lonely,  war-desolated  liighwa,^-.  Without  a  single 
meal  at  a  table,  and  with  a  bed  at  night  on  the 
grass  beneath  the  friendly  foliage  of  a  forest  tree, 
he  made  the  journey :  because  he  had  no  money  to 
pay  for  either,  and  was  yet  too  proud  to  seek 
lodging  or  meals  without  it.  His  solitary  fifty- 
cent  piece  fed  him  four  days  and  ferried  him  over 
two  rivers.  But  this  new  employment  soon  filled 
Ills  pockets  with  money. 

The  wants  of  the  country  were  dreadful,  and 
the  pitiable  condition  of  the  people  often  heart- 
rending to  behold.  Very  many  times,  poor,  Aveak 
women  and  delicate  httle  children  came  on  foot 
twenty  miles,  packing  their  little  burdens  of  grain, 
ia  order  to  obtain  a  trifle  of  much-needed  mone}'. 
Those  who  had  a  horse  left,  brought  their  stock 
on  its  back ;  and  others  yet  still  more  fortunate, 
loaded  wagons. 

All  these  little  and  larger,  steadily  pouring,  and 
ever  increasing  streams,  rapidly,  rapidly  filled  up 
cars.  At  the  high  prices  which  grains  then  com- 
manded, every  four  cars  counted  one  hundred 
dollars  for  G-ar land  Cloud;  and  occasionally  that 
number  were  filled  and  shipped  in  one  day. 

The  merchants  were  grasping  and  merciless  in 
their  barter  dealings  with  the  poor,  helpless  farm- 
ers, entirely  in  the  power  of  those  blind  mercena- 
ries ;  who  could  not  perceive  the  mad  folly  they 
were  perpetrating  when"  killing  the  goose  in  order 
to  secure  the  golden  egg."  They  did  this  when 
refusing  to  receive  anything  but  cash  or  grain 
for  stajjle  articles,  and  when  selling  other  goods, 
at  from  two  to  five  hundred  per  cent,  profit,  in  pay- 
mem  for  farm  products,  for  which  they  would  not 
allow  more  than  two-thirds  actual  cash  value. 

Cloud  witnessed  these  things  day  after  day, with 
deep  chagrin,  rankling  mortification,  and  bitter 
indignation. 

At  length,  poor  women  who  had  (?bme  twenty, 
sometimes  even  fifty  miles,  to  procure  a  little  cof- 
fee, cotton  yarn,  or  other  staple  in  exchange  for 


articles  of  produce  such  as  appeared  in  the  mer- 
chants" proscribed  list,  began  to  go  to  Cloud  with 
tears  in  their  eyes,  and  to  implore  him  most  pit- 
eously  to  buy  their  eggs,  their  chickens,  their 
cheese,  butter,  or  whatever  it  was,  at  any  price, 
in  order  to  enable  them  to  obtain  the  articles  for 
which  they  came  so  far,  and  with  such  painful 
inconvenience. 

He  now  had  hundreds  of  dollars  idle,  which  every 
day  was  steadily  increasing  in  amount.  This  de- 
cided him  to  yield  to  their  solicitations.  He  bought 
some  of  their  produce,  and  made  trial  shipments 
to  old  comrades,  who,  poor  and  dependent  like 
himself,  had  embarked  in  the  commission  trade  at 
points  of  commercial  interest.  These  were  men 
whom  he  beheved  would  exert  themselves,  be 
prompt,  and  make  honest  returns.  He  wrote 
them,  fully  detailing  the  situation  of  the  poor 
farmers,  and  the  circumstances  under  \^•hicll  he 
had  been  driven  to  make  the  experimental  pur- 
chases and  shipments. 

The  results  were  of  the  most  gratifying  nature, 
and  aroused  in  the  young  cavalryman  the  long 
lethargic  and  wellnigh  extinct  embers  of  his  fiery 
genius. 

Wheat  harvest  is  passed,  a  magnificently  boun- 
tiful one;  and  the  golden  grain  will  soon  be  ready 
for  market. 

It  is  midnight  of  an  August  Saturday  when 
Cloud  finishes  loading  his  last  car,  receives  his 
bill  of  lading,  sees  the  cars  that  he  has  ready 
coupled  on  to  the  freight  train,  di'ops  his  letter  in 
the  post-box,  and  starts  across  a  meadow  and 
orchard  to  his  room,  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
distant. 

On  the  way  he  seats  his  weary  frame  under  the 
boughs  of  a  grand  old  walnut-tree,  to  think  quietly 
for  awhile,  where  nothing  will  chsturb  his  reflec- 
tions. 

Thus  seated,  he  in  fancy  sees  the  pale  ghastly 
features  of  his  lamented  friend  and  beloved  Gene- 
ral, as  they  appeared  one  night  in  the  valley  of 
Virginia;  and  hears  his  sorrowful  and  plaintive 
voice,  as  he  heard  it  then,  when  he  was  entreated 
by  his  now  long-mourned  commander  to  devote 
his  life  to  the  interest  of  the  poor  toil-worn  agri- 
culturists of  his  desolate  yet  ever  sunny  South. 
And  beside  this  spectral  shadow  of  a  vanished 


154 


MYSTIC   ROMANCES  OF   THE   BLUE   AND  THE  GREY. 


friend,  hand  in  hand,  stands  the  angehc  form  of 
little  Fannie,  radiant  with  the  glowing  splendor  of 
her  grand  soul,  as  she  stood  before  him  on  that 
but  lately  flown  July  morning,  pleading  with 
him  in  behalf  of  the  same  sad  cause ;  enthusiasti- 
cally contrasting  the  glories  of  peaceful  heroism 
and  devotion,  with  Jackson's  undying  military 
renown. 

Up  to  this  moment  he  has  done,  perhaps,  all 
that  he  could  do,  yet  the  labor  has  been  per- 
formed without  special  effort  or  extra  exertion. 
Now  the  spectral  forms  which  imagination  places 
before  the  closed  eyes,  speak,  or  seem  to  speak, 
together : 

"  Your  time  is  at  hand.     Act!  Act!  Act!" 

From  this  seat  G-arland  Cloud  arises  under  the 
strongly  intensified  conviction  that  to  him  his 
duty  has  been  revealed,  and  its  pathway  clearly 
demonstrated.  With  his  hand  upon  his  heart,  he 
raises  his  tear-dimmed  eyes  to  Heaven's  clear 
and  starry  vaulted  dome — night's  mystical  and 
canopied  wonder — and  swears,  there  beneath  the 
sombre  shadow  of  the  low  spreading  thick  foli- 
age of  that  old  walnut-tree,  in  the  solemn  silence 
of  this  summer  midnight,  by  the  ghostly  shades 
of  his  battle-slumbering  comrades,  to  devote  his 
life,  through  weal  or  woe,  to  promoting  the  inter- 
est and  encouraging  the  prosperity  of  the  hus 
bandmen  of  their  Southern-land — the  land  they 
loved  so  fondly,  and  died  for  so  bravely,  often  amid 
the  victorious  shouts  of  their  legions,  with  their 
yet  defiant  "  Bonnie  Blue  Flag  "  flaunting  in  the 
breeze,  as  the  last  sands  of  their  devoted  lives 
were  ebbing  out — unembittered  by  the  humilia- 
ting spectacle  reserved  for  their  survivors,  of  wit- 
nessing it  trailing  in  the  dust. 

But  for  one  sadly  lamentable  circumstance,  here 
is  a  rare  and  enviable  character  well  worthy  of 
emulation.  But,  alas !  that  terrible  circumstance — 
overcasting  with  a  gloom  deeper  and  blacker 
than  the  most  rayless  midnight  that  ever  oppres- 
sed the  earth  with  its  impenetrable  darkness,  all 
that  he  is  or  ever  may  be ;  covering  with  a  stain 
that  all  the  Atlantic's  flood  of  blue  and  crystal 
tides  could  never  wash  away,  a  fast-set  ebon- 
dye  that  all  the  Polar  snows  might  never  bleach 
to  its  wonted  whiteness — that  deadly  fatal  con- 
cealment.    Its  spectral  ghost  haunts- him  as  he 


walks,  slowly  walks,  on  to  his  room.  How  deeply 
he  regrets  it — yet  all  too  late.  The  terrible  step 
has  been  taken  with  unthinking  indiscretion,  and 
can  be  recalled  nevermore,  but  must  remain  for- 
ever the  same  in  the  eternal  past.  It  is  a  deeply 
planted  and  most  securely  rooted  seed;  ever 
flourishing  in  dark  luxuriance  that  defies  alike  the 
summer's  droutlis  and  winter's  frosts;  always 
heavily  laden  with,  and  still  prolifically  yielding 
its  bitter  fruits,  from  which  the  wretched  planter 
is  doomed  to  eat,  in  sadness  and  woe,  all  the  days 
of  his  weary  life. 

Oh!  as  our  mind  lingers  upon  this  wretched 
mortal's  silent  and  heart-rending  agonies,  and  his 
pitiful  struggles  to  bear  up  beneath  a  crushmg 
thralldom,  while  striving  to  respond  with  unmur- 
muring, unswerving  faithfulness  to  the  stern 
behest  of  imperious  Duty's  unpitying  voice,  what 
emotions  thrill  our  being !  Now,  as  from  this 
picture,— which  is  of  necessity  hidden  from  the 
eyes  of  the  world  in  which  its  victim  moves, 
where  it  might  not  enlist  the  slightest  breath  of 
pitying  sympathy,  was  its  reality  known, — we  turn 
to  the  bright  and  hope-buoyant  young  lives  all 
over  this  land  who  are  doomed  to  kindred  fates, 
— tears,  unAvorthy  yet  bitter,  blinding  tears  of  pity 
well  up  from  the  deep,  almost  sterile  cavities  of 
oui  heart.  Our  cold  benumbed,  weary  fingers 
clutch  the  pen  yet  tighter;  and  we  resolve 
anew  that  our  midnight  lamp  shall  never  be  ex- 
tinguished until  our  task  is  done,  and  our  per- 
chance unimpressible,  yet  conscientiously  earnest, 
voice  of  warning  has  gone  forth  on  the  swift 
wings  of  the  pure  winds,  telling  all  men  whither 
they  are  tending. 

Poor  Cloud !  he  is  past  the  hour  when  pity's 
tear  or  misery's  voice  can  soothe  the  bitterness  of 
his  woe  or  warn  his  wayward  foot  from  the  brink 
of  the  shppery  precipice  where  he  once  stood 
hesitating  whether  or  not  to  assume  the  mask 
of  concealment.  When  he  decided  to  accept  its 
services,  this  was  the  mad  leap  over  the  giddy 
crag  and  down  into  the  fathomless  deptlis  of  the 
yawning  abyss  of  never-ending  despair,  from 
whence  he  may  rise  no  more.  Hence,  for  him 
we  have  no  tears  to  waste,  no  word  to  stir  the 
wells  of  other  hearts  to  overflow  in  sympathy, 
because  all  pity  would  be  bestowed  in  vain. 


THE  CHANGING  WIND  AND  TIDE. 


155 


But  we  draw  the  dark  outlines  of  the  grim 
and  spectral  shadows  that  have  extinguished  his 
lamps  of  hope,  and  enveloped  his  fair  young  hfe 
with  a  gloomy  darkness  that  no  prosperity,  no 
power,  no  love  can  ever  permanently  and  wholly 
re-illuminate,  with  the  desire  that  they  may  cause 
sympathy  and  excite  alarm  for  those  who  have 
not  quite  taken  the  irretrievable  step  that  sooner 
or  later  leads  to  ruin.  Thus  we  hope  to  arouse 
vigilance  and  action  before  it  is  too  late ;  to  put 
forth  determined  and  properly  directed  efforts 
to  save  those  tempted  hkewise — something  far 
more  feasible  and  practicable,  and  of  graver  im- 
port to  this  great  country  than  all  the  missionary 
work  beneath  the  cerulean  dome  of  heaven ! 

Cloud's  usefulness  to  the  agriculturist  may  often 
and  for  long  periods  appear  unimpaired.  But 
what  is  life  to  him,  and  what  is  he?  He  is 
but  the  ghostly  spectre  of  vanished  hope ;  his  life 
doomed  to  be  but  a  cruel  dream,  with  its  every 
destined  sweet  deeply  impregnated  with  the  tinc- 
ture of  poison's  gall.  Yet  still  must  he  be  suffi- 
ciently endowed  and  uncomplainingly  nerved — 

"  In  strength  to  bear  what  time'cannot  abate. 
And  feed  on  bitter  fruits  without  accusing  Fate." 

The  breakfast  of  the  Sabbath  morning  finds 
him  with  his  resolution  taken  and  the  plans  con- 
nected with  it  matured. 

Now,  in  the  peaceful  pursuits  of  life,  does  the 
trained  genius  of  the  scout  and  the  commander, 
the  strong  point  characteristically  in  his  nature, 
begin  to  manifest  the  potency  of  its  usefulness: 
decision,  coolness,  action,  simultaneously  blended. 

Five  minutes'  time  suffices  for  him  to  arrange 
witli  the  railroad  agent  and  his  brother  to  care 
for  his  interests  for  ten  daj^s. 

When  the  sun  goes  down  he  is  two  hundred 
miles  on  his  way  to  the  East.  Monday  night  he 
sleeps  in  New  York. 

He  finds  Silas  Worthington  early  Tuesday 
morning.  The  old  Colonel  receives  him  cordially, 
and  listens  with  interest  to  his  concisely  detailed 
plans.  "When  he  has  finished,  he  is  quietly  in- 
formed that  he  will  be  immediately  placed  on  a 
footing  to  buy  all  the  goods  he  desires  or  may 
desire.  In  addition  to  this,  the  Colonel  gives  him 
an  important  agency. 


He  returns  by  Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  and 
Richmond.  In  each  of  these  commercial  centres 
he  establishes  most  important  connections :  among 
others,  the  buying  of  grains  for  mills,  on  commis- 
sion, for  cash  ;  they  furnishing  the  money. 

He  arranges  for  the  shipment  of  every  species 
of  produce ;  and  to  draAv  to  a  liberal  extent  on 
bills  of  lading  against  all  shipments  whenever  he 
desires  to  do  so. 

In  New  York  he  buys  an  immense  stock  of 
goods  for  the  market  to  which  they  are  intended 
to  go.' 

Learning  from  New  York  merchants  the  prices 
at  which  similar  goods  would  be  offered  in  agri- 
cultural districts  not  located  in  the  Southern 
States,  he  has  a  large  number  of  posters  printed, 
naming  prices  at  which  he  will  sell  many  leading 
articles :  "  Strictly  for  cash ;  no  bartering  under 
any  circumstances  whatever."  Then  follows  the 
bold  and  startling  announcement  that,  "For  every 
descriptionof  produce,  a  fair  market  value  will 
be  paid  in  cash." 

Thus  situated,  he  returns.  The  same  day  he 
arrives  he  leases  an  immense  store  and  ware- 
house down  at  the  railroad  track,  for  a  merely 
nominal  rent.  Before  noon  he  has  some  carpen- 
ters and  a  gang  of  freedmen  at  work  putting  the 
premises  in  good  order.  By  the  time  the  goods 
arrive,  everything  is  ready. 

Heat  once  employs  the  most  experienced  sales- 
men. For  himself  he  fits  up  an  office  between  the 
store  and  the  ware-house.  In  this  ware-house 
all  produce  is  received  and  weighed,  and  the 
owner  furnished  with  a  ticket  by  which  the  set- 
tlement is  made  in  the  office.  But  before  the 
produce  is  bought  it  is  sampled  in  the  ware- 
house; and  the  owner  passes  with  his  samples 
into  the  office,  where  Cloud  buys  his  stock. 
Then,  after  the  settlement,  and  the  man  has  re- 
ceived his  money,  he  is  cordially  solicited  to  call 
again  whenever  he  has  anything  to  sell;  and 
passes  from  the  office  out  into  the  store.  But 
Cloud  never  once  intimates  to  a  man  that  he 
wishes  to  sell  him  goods ;  yet,  notwithstanding, 
he  always  sells  more  than  he  could  have  sold 
had  he  attempted  to  buy  the  produce  for  part 
trade  and  with  far  less  trouble. 

In  the  brief  space  of  two  months,  the  business 


156 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES   OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


is  so  large  that  it  astonishes  even  himself :  it  en- 
slaves him.  Wagons  arrive  from  a  distance  of 
one  hundred  miles  on  either  side  of  the  railroad. 
Everything  Cloud  touches  turns  to  gold.  By 
the  New  Year's  season,  he  is  the  most  prosperous 
man  within  a  radius  of  one  hundred  miles  around 
him ;  and  is  far  surpassing  the  business  of  any  one 
else. 

He  reduces  the  price  of  goods  to  a  fair  and 
legitimate  standard,  and  opens  up  channels  to 
receive  everything  the  farmer  can  produce,  at 
liberally  remunerative  figures.  He  certainly  fairly 
redeems  his  pledges  fully  a  thousand  times  more 
extensively  than  he  had  any  reason  or  grounds 
to  anticipate.     Still  he  goes  on  increasing. 

For  eighteen  hours  every  day,  he  labors  in- 
cessantly. He  is  in  bed  no  more  than  four  hours, 
from  one  to  five  o'clock  a.  m. 

Just  now  he  finds,  as  it  were,  an  oblivion  of 
blissful  forgetfulness,  without  time  to  think  of  the 
past,  and  feels : 

"  Tet  though  a  dreary  strain,  to  this  I  cling, 
So  that  it  wean  me  from  the  weary  dream 
Of  selfish  grief  or  gladness— so  it  fling 

Forgetfulness  around  mo,  it  shall  seem 
To  me,  though  to  none  else,  a  not  ungrateful  theme." 


CHAPTER    XXXIX. 

THE      CUAMBKR      OF      DEATH. 

"  There  is  not  a  flower  on  all  the  hills ;  the  frost  is  on 
the  pane ; 
I  cannot  live  to  see  the  snow-drops  come  again. 

*********** 
O  sweet  and  strange  it  seems  to  me,  that  ere  this  day 

is  done; 
The  voice  that  now  is  speaking  may  be  beyond  the  sun — 
Forever  and  forever  with  those  just  souls  and  true— 
And  what  is  life,  that  we  should  moan?  why  make  we 

such  ado? 

*********** 

On  the  chancell'd  casement,  and  upon  that  grave  of 

mine, 
In  the  early,  early  morning,  the  summer  sun  will 

shine."  —Tennyson. 

After  the  bustling  excitement  of  preparation  is 
over — the  jubilee  of  the  wedding  celebration  has 
died  away,  the  debris  been  removed,  and  the  old 
mansion  has  assumed  an  air  of  pensive  quiet,  in 
ominous  sympathy  with  its  unhappy  master, — 
Norman   Mountjoy  rallies   again    sufficiently  to 


attend  to  business  in  a  purely  mechanical  method, 
acquired  from  long  years  of  perpetual  habit.  But 
the  heart  of  the  poor  man  is  no  more  in  his  work : 
it  is  broken,  and  its  fragments  are  buried  in  the 
sepulchre  of  the  past.  Literally,  his  soul  has  gone 
from  him. 

He  knows  that  the  wife  of  his  bosom  has  grown 
heartless  and  unscrupulous.  -That  she  has  stooped 
to  employ  some  basely  ignoble  means  in  order  to 
command  sufficient  money  to  prepare  the  brilliant 
and  princely  wedding  of  her  daughters,  he  is  most 
positively  assured;  as  to  its  nature,  he  as  a  matter 
of  course  cannot  conjecture. 

His  wife,  the  adored  idol  of  his  early  manhood 
and  of  his  life's  summer,  has  been  almost  entirely 
estranged  from  him  ever  since  their  unpleasant 
interview  relative  to  funds  for  this  identical  pur- 
pose. 

The  fate  of  poor  Pleasington,  and  the  blighted 
life  of  hapless  Effie  also  weigh  with  bitter  sever- 
ity upon  his  mind.  He  feels  satisfied  that  Pleas- 
ington is  not  only  innocent,  but  that  he  was  the 
victim  of  some  demoniacal  machination,  and  that 
Mrs.  Mountjoy  is  its  cause  and  instigator.  Two 
days  after  Effie's  retirement  within  the  seclusion 
of  the  convent.  Madam  Mountjoy  calls  at  that 
institution  to  see  Miss  Edelstein ;  but  this  young 
heart-stricken  mourner  obstinately  refuses  to  grant 
her  admittance. 

The  misgivings  of  Effie  in  relation  to  the  cause 
that  wrought  Lawrence's  destruction,  and  so 
cruelly  blighted  her  own  fair  young  life  once  so 
full  of  blissful  dreams,  are  the  same  as  those  of  hef 
poor,  slowly-dying  uncle. 

After  Madam  Mountjoy's  return  from  this  visit, 
she  is  hke  a  demented  creature,  a  very  Uoness  in 
human  form ;  and  appears  the  picture  of  despair — 
a  prey  to  that  unrelenting  demon:  remorse  oi 
conscience.  This  spirit,  in  her  case,  has  been 
aroused  from  the  callousness  of  lethargic  inertness, 
only  when  she  finds  that  the  spoils  of  her  more 
than  savage  atrocity  are  securely  beyond  her 
grasp,  and  safe  from  the  reach  and  power  of  her 
fiendish  influence.  She  ceases  to  make  calls  or  ta 
receive  visits. 

Two  months  later,  Arnold  Noel,  her  nephew 
of  such  truly  kindred  congeniality  of  nature  and 
propensity,  is  arrested  for  an  aggravated  case  of 


THE  CHAMBER  OF   DEATH. 


157 


burglary  in  his  own  city,  and  is  held  in  thirty 
thousand  dollars  bail,  which  his  father  furnishes, 
the  young  culprit  jumps,  and  the  old  gentleman 
has  to  pay. 

This  eifectually  terminates  all  the  damnable  de- 
signs of  his  wicked  aunt  in  relation  to  him,  as  far 
as  he  is  now  concerned.  But,  alas  1  it  does  not 
atone  for  the  ruin  which'they  have  alread}'  entailed 
upon  others,  nor  relieve  them  from  the  odium, 
nor  the  active  operation  of  the  cruel,  impending 
thralldom  beneath  which  they  groan. 

As  to  ISTorman  Mountjoy,  he  is  preparing  for 
the  end  with  all  the  diligence  and  dispatch  of 
which  his  feeble  and  ever-declining  strength  ad- 
mits, because  he  knoAvs  that  it  is  near. 

Oglethrop  and  Eva  are  his  source  of  consoln- 
tion  and  cheer — true,  faithful,  constant.  For  them 
he  wrestles  with  the  grim,  unpitying  Angel;  of 
them  he  thinks.  For  their  sakes  he  plans  and 
labors ;  rouses  himself,  by  superhuman  efforts,  to 
endure  the  painfully  trying  ordeal  of  going  to  and 
from  business ;  and  laboring  in  it,  daj^  after  day, 
in  order  to  arrange  for  the  future  of  these  two 
tenderly  devoted  children.  He  desires  to  instruct 
his  son-in-law  in  'the  firm  principles  and  sterling 
truths  requisite  to  direct  and  control  a  young  man, 
that  he  may  achieA^e  certain  and  stable  success, 
and  establish  a  well-merited  reputation  as  a  mer- 
chant of  undeviating  integrity — the  unblemished 
soul  of  honor.  This  he  had  himself  ever  been, 
and  as  such  he  will  sink  into  the  grave.  Early  in 
the  cold  and  bleak  December  of  1865,  these  la- 
bors are  all  consummated  to  his  satisfaction. 

Christmas-day  he  is  no  longer  able  to  leave  his 
room.  From  this  day,  he  sinks  rapidly.  On  Ncav 
Year's  eve  it  is  evident  that  the  end  is  near  with 
the  poor,  patient  sufferer,  Avho,  i-ational  and 
in  the  full  possession  of  his  faculties,  never  utters 
a  groan. 

Oglethrop  and  Eva  keep  a  solemn  watch-meet- 
ing— a  sad  yet  beautiful  picture  of  devotion  and 
resignation,  here  in  this  chamber  of  death — the 
two  young  and  tender-hearted  children  watching 
beside  the  couch  of  a  dying  father,  in  the  last  hours 
of  the  dying  year. 

With  a  great  effort  he  partially  raises  himself 
higher  upon  the  pillows  and  speaks : 

"  Eva,  get  Tennyson's  poems,  please,  my  dar- 


ling, and  read  me  the  second  part  of  '  Tlie  May 
Queen." 

"Now,  my  children,  remember  this,  and  its 
beautifid  gospel  sentiments,  breathed  in  every  line. 
Yes,  I  too,  shall  be ''often,  often  near  you'  if  I 
can.  I  know  yon  will  come  sometimes  to  see 
my  gi'ave. 

"One  thing:  bury  me  neatly;  plain,  but  not 
extravagantly.  This  is  an  injunction;  do  not,  I 
entreat  you,  disregard  it.  Be  kind  to  your  mother; 
she  is  mad  with  despair — the  victim  of  circum- 
stances which  pecuhar  social  influences  and 
errors  have  heaped  upon  her.     God  help  her! 

"  Well,  my  children,  I  am  keeping  the  watch- 
meeting  with  you,  a  double  watch-meeting. 

"Last  year,  my  Eva,  we  were  at  the  church, 
Avatching  and  praying  for  peace  for  our  poor 
country  during  the  New  Year.  Thank  God  Ave 
have  lived  to  see  it.  Now  I  am  watching  and 
waiting  for  that  peace  that  will  last  for  evermore, 
'where  the  wicked  cease  from  troubling,  and  the 
weary  are  at  rest.' 

"Live  my  children,  I  beg  of  you,  live  true,  natu- 
ral lives.  In  your  private,  social  and  other  relations 
in  and  Avith  the  world,  act  fully  up  to  Avhat  you 
appear.  Do  not  dissemble  and  deceive ;  for  your 
own  hearts  would  give  your  actions  the  lie,  and 
the  conscience  forever  render  your  lives  miserable 
by  its  perpetual  accusations. 

"There  is  rarely  very  httle,  if  any,  present 
pleasure  or  benefit  in  acting  and  living  falsely — 
in  appearing  to  the  world  in  the  light  of  day,  a 
far  different  creature  from  what  in  God's  and 
your  own  sight  you  are  viewed.  And  its  certain 
and  unavoidable  penalties  are  terrible. 

"I  have,  in  my  active  career  as  a  merchant,  a 
husband,  and  a  father,  but  one  feature  in  my  life 
to  look  back  at  AA'ith  regret;  and  that  is  not  one 
of  commission,  but  of  omission.  It  eclipses  and 
darkens  my  whole  life  with  the  rayless  blackness 
of  despair.  It  is  comprised  in  my  neglect  of  duty 
to  my  family,  in  omitting  to  govern  my  own 
household  Avith  wise  and  prudent  economy.  Now 
I  am  paying  the  penalty :  sinking  into  the  grave 
the  pitiable  A'ictim  of  a  broken  heart.  But  I  thank 
God  that  it  is  this,  and  not  dishonor. 

"I  could  have  taken  my  station  in  a  lower 
sphere  of  life,  and  been  resigned;  but  your  poor 


158 


MYSTIC  KOI^IANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


mother  could  not.  She  did  not  realize,  could  not 
realize  the  situation,  nor  what  she  was  doing. 

"  This  disappointment  ci'ushed  all  hope  out  of 
my  being.  I  have  been  lingering  in  slow  and 
fearful  torture;  but  now  the  pangs  of  going  are 
much  alleviated,  since  I  can  leave  you,  my  poor 
children,  with  a  brightly  promising  future  opened 
up  for  you.  Take  care  of  it.  Guard  it  with  re- 
ligious zeal;  and  never  permit  yourselves  to  be 
allured  from  the  path  of  Uuth,  honor,  right,  and 
you  will  fulfill  your  destiny  most  nobly,  by  leading 
pure  lives  illuminated  with  the  brilhancy  of  ex- 
emplary usefulness. 

"Remember  my  words,  because  they  are  the 
oflFsprings  of  a  bitter  experience — and  still  more: 
they  are  uttered  from  between  the  threshold  of 
Time  and  the  portal  of  the  great  Unknown. 

"  Should  my  summons  come  suddenly,  before 
your  sisters  come  again,  tell  them  I  love  and  pity 
them  in  my  last  moments ;  and  that  I  left  with 
you  my  blessing  and  my  farewell. 

"  And  httle  EfSe,  the  wounded  dove — poor, 
broken  heart !  I  will  not  have  to  wait  but  a  httle 
while  for  her  to  come — convey  to  her  in  tender 
words,  gentle  tokens  of  my  sympathy  and  my 
love ;  and  that  my  consolation  is,  that  when  for 
her  cross  she  receives  a  crown,  Ave  shall  meet 
again  Tell  her  that  for  her  this  was  my  last 
farewell. 

"  And  now,  my  little  children,  I  am  weary  and 
sleepy.  I  go  to  sleep,  but  you  must  call  me  as 
the  New  Year  is  coming  in,  for  I  would  hear  the 
knell  of  the  departing  year,  as  you  must  hear 
mine." 

It  is  the  immortal,  the  spirit  of  poor  Mount- 
joy,  that  has  rallied  the  prostrate  form,  animated 
the  pallid  cheek,  unloosened  the  tongue  from  the 
paralytical  chords  rf  death,  that  enables  him  to 
speak.  This  creates  in  the  breasts  of  his  sorrow- 
stricken  children  the  delusive  hope  that  he  has 
taken  a  sudden  turn  for  the  better. 

He  sleeps  as  tranquil  as  a  little  babe — the 
beautiful  sleep  of  the  innocent,  with  a  sweet  smile 
on  his  lips. 

The  gas  is  turned  low,  and  renders  the  appear- 
ance of  the  apartment  semi-spectral.  Perhaps, 
with  the  dim  shadows  reflected  by  the  low- 
burning  lights,  is  mingled,  too,  the  awe-inspiring 


hues  of  shade  created  by  the  solemu  iuliueuce  of 
the  presence  of  the  Death  Angel. 

Without,  the  merciless  northern  blast  of  winter's 
chill  and  cruel  wind  wails  a  mourful  requiem. 

Steadily  the  unerring,  ever-moving  hand  on 
the  dial  of  Time  ghdes  smoothly  along,  meting 
out,  one  by  one,  its  measure  of  little  seconds  from 
the  great  reservoir  of  inexhaustible  Eternity ; 
unheeding  the  mortal  agonies  that  are  wreaked 
upon  the  children  of  Earth,  while  these  items  of 
infinitesimal  ages  are  multiplying  one  short  hour. 

At  last,  the  old  clock  on  the  mantel,  that  has 
measured  so  many  painfully  weary  and  sleep- 
less hours  for  the  poor  sufierer  within  the  past 
year,  marks  ten  minutes  to  midnight.  Then  Eva 
goes  cautiously  up  to  the  bed-side,  and  falteringly, 
yet  softly  and  tenderly,  says:  "Father,  the  hour 
is  come  for  the  bells  to  toll."  ' 

Slowly  he  opens  his  grand,  sad,  dim  eyes,  and 
turns  them  from  first  one  object  to  another  around 
the  room ;  finally  they  rest  upon  his  children — • 
fixed  in  a  steadfast  gaze  of  fondest  tenderness. 

Now,  like  a  thunder  clap,  the  first  sharp  notes 
from  the  brazen  throats  of  a  myriad  of  bells  are 
borne  and  wafted  by  the  cold  and  bitter  wind 
and  break  upon  the  startled  ear  of  night — the 
death  summons  of  a  year. 

Poor,  world-weary,  sinking  sufierer  I  He  hears; 
for  he  smiles,  and  makes  a  perceptible  effort  to 
fold  his  arms  more  tightly  across  his  breast.  As 
the  peaHng  chorus  swells  and  reverberates,  his 
eyes  gradually  close ;  the  flush  on  the  cheek,  that 
rose  with  the  smile,  fades  as  its  traces  vanish ;  and 
the  face  assumes  a  marble  placidity.  There  is  no 
labored  breathing — not  a  struggle  within  that 
poor,  pain-racked  breast. 

Poor  children!  they  think,  "how  easy  papa  has 
gone  to  sleep;"  and  he  has,  too,  gone  quietly  to 
sleep — the  sleep  that  hath  no  dreams. 

As  the  last  knell  of  the^  bells  is  tolled  and 
dying  away,  and  while  the  departing  year,  with  its 
stores  of  joy  and  sorrow,  pleasure  and  pain,  fes- 
tivity and  death,  is  fast  disappearing  on  the 
completed  revolution  of  the  wheel  of  Time,  the 
suffering  soul  is  free,  and  winging  its  way  to  its 
long  and  merited  abode. 

Norman  Mountjoy  is  deadi  Poor,  world- 
weary,  heart-broken,    noble,    pure,    true  manl 


THE  ANGELS  OF   THE  MOUNTAIN. 


159 


Alas  that  he  should  pay  a  penalty  so  terrible  for 
au  omission  of  duty  so  apparently  trivial  in  its 
nature.  Sad  to  reflect,  that  it  was  so  shamefully 
abused  by  a  cruel  hearted,  a  basely  unappreciative 
wife.  Wretched  woman !  when  she  beheld  the 
matured  fruit  which  she  had  planted  from  the 
seeds  of  indiscretionj  nurtured  so  lavishly  fi-om  am- 
bition's copious  fountain  for  so  many  years,  rather 
than  submit  to  the  humiliation  of  partaking  of 
its  bitter  substance,  she  did  not  scruple  to  stab 
him  to  the  heart  with  a  yet  more  unmerciful  and 
venomous  thrust  than  the  dagger  which  found 
Duncan's  breast,  directed  thither  by  the  wicked 
whisper  of  a  woman. 

But  brave  man,  admirable  mind,  constant, 
faithful  heart!  To  stand  firm  for  the  true  and 
the  right,  and  behold  all  liis  hopes  vanish,  the 
last  prospect  in  life  destroyed,  and  even  expe- 
rience life  itself  steadily,  day  by  day,  ebbing  out, 
rather  than  stain  the  fair  and  brightly  shining 
name  with  dishonor — rare  and  beautifully  exem- 
plary manhood!  The  last  of  his  name  in  his  race 
and  line,  he  leaves  to  the  great  world  a  noble  ex- 
ample of  virtue,  and  an  appalling  warning  against 
ill-order  and  neglect  in  the  little  world  of  honae. 


CHAPTER  XL. 

THE    ANGELS    OF     THE    JIOUNTAIN. 

"  His  quoen,  the  garden  queen  his  rose, 
Unbent  by  winds,  uncliillecl  by  snows. 
Far  from  the  winters  of  the  West 
By  every  breeze  and  season  blest."— BYEON. 

We  last  saw  Gertrude  and  Rosalia  Flowers  in 
their  own  mountain  cabin,  the  evening  when, 
long  years  ago,  they  related  to  Carrie  Harman  the 
story  of  their  lives  and  wrongs,  and  were  by  her 
christened  "The  Angels  of  the  Mountain." 

We  were,  when  taking  leave  of  them,  promis- 
ed that  after  the  gloomy  shadow  of  the  war- 
cloud  had  been  dispelled,  we  might  be  permitted 
to  meet  them  once  more  in  the  sacred  retirement 
of  their  remote  seclusion.  But  we  are  doomed  to 
sad  disappointment.  We  have  tarried  too  long  in 
our  wanderings.  The  mountain  roses  have  been 
plucked  and  borne  away ;  the  strong  eagles  of  the 
valley  have  swooped  down  upon  the  timid  doves, 


and  carried  them  away  from  their  own  cozy 
mountain  cote. 

Little  Rosa  has  bloomed  to  2:)erfect  and  most 
beautiful  womanhood.  Their  Jesse  returned  to 
them  in  safety. 

The  admiration  and  sympathy  of  Carrie  Har- 
man for  these  two  adopted  children  of  the  mount- 
ain, would  neither  permit  their  pathetic  story 
nor  themselves  to  remain  buried  amid  the 
obscurity  of  their  simple  neighbors,  in  the  deep 
remoteness  of  their  lonely  solitude.  She  visited 
them,  and  induced  others  to  visit  them,  and 
actually,  as  it  were,  forced  them  to  go  to  the 
valley.  They  were  both  admired  and  esteemed 
by  every  one  with  whom  they  became  acquainted 

Upon  both  Carrie  Harman's  father  and  brother, 
they  produced  a  vital  impression,  which  resulted 
in  a  rather  novel  double  wedding  during  the 
hoUdays  of  the  Christmas  of  1865,  and  a  grand 
festival  at  the  Harman  mansion.  We  now  find 
the  guests  there  assembled,  to  enjoy  the  liberal 
profusion  of  this  happy  occasion.  But  we  are 
not  specially  interested  in  the  present  relations  of 
the  happy  couples,  and  will  not  for  the  moment 
disturb  them. 

But,  after  the  guests  have  all  partaken  of  the, 
supper,  let  us  hear  what  one  of  the  most  honored, 
yet  still  a  volunteer  waiter  at  the  table,  and  Miss 
Carrie,  who  are  seated  alone  at  a  small  side-table, 
to  enjoy  a  quiet  supper,  have  to  say. 

Carrie:  "Well,  General,  it  is  a  comfort  to  sit 
down.  I  know  you  must  be  wearied.  I  should 
be  vexed  at  you  for  forcing  yourself  into  this 
menial  position  that  young  people  should  fulfill, 
were  it  not  that  I  have  both  the  pleasure  and  the 
honor  of  supping  with  you." 

Gen.  Cloud:  "I  could  not  resist  the  tempta- 
tion to  assist  the  "Angel  of  Consolation"  in  her 
burdensome  duties  as  mistress  of  ceremonies  on 
this  happy  occasion;  and  the  pleasure  of  this 
quiet  moment  with  her  would  more  than  com- 
pensate for  the  labors  which  I  have  performed, 
were  they  a  hundred  times  as  great." 

Carrie:  "  Thank  you  for  that  comphment, 
which  I  prize,  coming  as  it  does  from  one  who 
detests  flattery. 

"  But,  by  the  way  General,  do  you  not  regard 
this  as  a  novel  affair?  " 


160 


I^IYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


Gen.  C :  ''It  wants  only  one  thing  to  have 

rendered  it  indeed  unique — that  is  you,  and  Jesse, 
the  heroic  httle  Colonel;  and  I  am  rather  sur- 
prised and  somewhat  disappointed  that  you  two 
are  left  out." 

Carrie  :  "  How  unkindly  ungenerous  and  un- 
charitable it  is  of  you  to  say  this,  G-eneral,  when 
neither  of  us  ever  for  one  moment  even  dreamed 
of  such  a  thing.  Col.  Flowers  is  to  be  to  me  as 
a  brother;  I  to  him  as  a  sister  :  this  is  settled. 

"  To  use  a  vulgarism,  I  do  not  know  one  young 
lady  '  who  would  not  accept  him  at  the  drop  of  a 
hat.'  I  for  one,  was  the  opportunity  afforded  me, 
but  for  the  fact  that  there  are  reasons  unknown 
to  any  one  but  myself,  that  keep  me  free  from 
matrimonial  entanglements.  One  cannot  always 
vouch  for  the  freedom  of  one's  heart,  but  I  am  re- 
solved to  be  free  in  person,  at  least,  until  my  vow 
is  fulfilled. 

"  Our  young  men  are  so  badly  demoralized  by 
the  war  that,  as  to  the  most  of  them,  a  girl  can- 
not promise  herself  much  when  marrying  any  one 
of  them." 

Gen.  0 :   "That  last  remark  is  a  sad  and 

lamentable  truth,  and  I  often  cannot  refrain  from 
shuddering  when  I  contemplate  the  dissipation 
and  the  degeneracy  that  I  witness  spread  broad- 
cast everywhere  I  go ;  and  still  it  increases  every 
day." 

Carrie  :  "  Oh,  it  is  horrible!  -I  deplore  it ;  and 
I  much  fear  that  this  will  prove  a  greater  calamity 
to  the  country  than  all  the  Islighting  effects  of  the 
war  itself. 

"  The  dear,  dead  faces  were  radiant  with  honor, 
and  noble  as  the  pictures  of  true  manliness — their 
sad  memory  is  a  comfort.  But  an  unworthy  man 
is  continually  augmenting  his  own  depravity,  and 
leaving  behind  him,  as  he  journeys  over  the  earth, 
its  indelible  stains,  which  contaminate  and  mar 
with  venomous  poison  many  other  lives. 

"When  did  you  last  hear  from  Col.  Garland, 
General  ?  " 

Gen.  C :  "  Not  since  the  surrender ;    nor 

have  I  the  remotest  idea  where  the  poor  boy  is. 
This  is  enough  to  warp,  sour  and  embitter  his 
life  for  all  time.  I  do  not  think  that  lie  would 
be  in  much  danger  at  home,  certainly  there  could 
be  no  sort  of  risk  in  his  writing;  but  this  he  does 


not  know.  I  feel  quite  certain  that  if  he  did,  he 
would  write.  I  do  not  suffer  much  uneasiness 
about  him;  yet  still  I  would  like  to  know  where 
he  is  and  what  he  is  doing." 

Carrie  :  "  How  cruel  that  this  ghost  of  the 
war  should  still  haunt  him.  Our  gratitude  to  you 
and  him  can  never  be  repaid. 

"How  does  his  lady-love  bear  his  silent  al>- 
sence?  Does  she  remain  faitliful  and  true,  vrndc 
this  severely  trying  test?  " 

Gen.  C :  "  Fortunately  there  are  no  such 

tender  relations  between  him  and  any  young  lady. 
He  has  no  lady-love  to  sigh  for  him." 

Carrie  :  "  How  singular !  and  his  life  the  verit- 
able spirit  of  romance.  Did  he  correspond  with 
no  young  lady  during  all  those  dreary  years  of 
home-  and  social-severing  strife  ?  " 

Gen.  C :   "All  the  romance  about  him  was 

intense  and  earnest;  and  I  am  compelled  to 
admit  that,  though  apparently  desperate  and 
madly  reckless,  it  was  cool  and  deliberate  action. 

"  In  regard  to  your  question,  it  is  direct  and 
pointed;  and  a  true,  non-evasive  answer  forces 
me  to  reveal  a  sacred  secret,  confided  to  me  under 
pecuhar  circumstances : 

"  On  the  field  of  Gettysburg,  I  reprimanded  him 
for  his  rash  and  reckless  exploits,  which  I  have 
since  much  regretted. 

"  In  self-defense  he,  among  many  other  things, 
detailed  to  me  the  particulars  and  results  of  a  cor- 
respondence between  himself  and  a  young  lady, 
together  with  the  motives  which  actuated  him  to 
engage  in  it  at  the  outset,  and  the  desires  that 
prompted  him  to  continue  it. 

"  Pardon  me.  Miss  Harman,  if  I  say  too  much, 
when  I  inform  you  that  it  is  you  who  could  give 
me  ten  times  more  information  about  the  nature 
and  the  reality  of  this  correspondence  than  he 
gave  me.  You  have  forced  me  to  say  to  you 
what  no  one  could  have  done.  To  all  the  world 
besides,  my  lips  are  sealed.' 

Carrie  :  "  Well,  General,  there  is  nothing  in 
that  correspondence  to  cause  either  of  us  to 
blush.  Of  it  and  its  results  I  am  piously  proud. 
There  is  in  all  his  cautiously  guarded  pages 
naught  but  careful  reserve.  Not  one  sentence, 
phrase,  or  even  word  meant  as  coming  to  clothft 
a  personal  sentiment  from  him  to  me.  for  myself 


THE  ANGEL   AND   THE  FIEND. 


161 


alone,  that  would  console  or  soothe  the  weary 
longings  in  the  heart  of  a  sentimental,  sighing 
maiden.  G-en.  Cloud,  I  tell  you  they  would  chill 
an  icicle. 

"  His  beautiful  sentiments,  flowing  with  the 
currents  of  all  his  profuse  compliments,  that  might 
have  flattered  a  Venus,  were  in  the  name  of  the 
mountain  boys  and  the  country.    Thattvas  ally 

At  this  stage  of  their  conversation  a  messenger 
comes  in  to  say  that  their  presence  is  specially 
desired  in  the  parlor.  Supper  being  finished, 
they  hasten  to  respond. 

In  the  parlor  every  one  is  on  the  tip-toe  of 
expectation,  awaiting  in  breathless  suspense  for 
the  announcement  of  some  strange  and  startling 
mj-stery  connected  with  Mrs.  G-ertrude  'Flowers. 

On  the  afternoon  train  a  gentleman  arrived 
from  the  East,  and  registered  at  the  principal 
railway-town  hotel,  a  number  of  miles  from  the 
Harman  mansion. 

After  taking  some  refreshment,  he  made  special 
inquiries  of  the  landlord  concerning  Mrs.  Flowers, 
of  Little  Beaver  Mountain ;  and,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  learned  her  connection  with  the  festive 
occasion  at  the  Harman  homestead.  Without 
delay  he  procured  a  conveyance,  and  ordered  the 
driver  to  speed  post-haste,  in  order  to  arrive 
there  before  the  gay  scene  should  close ;  which 
was  done,  much  to  his  gratification.  This  was  an 
eminent  New  York  lawyer,  and  a  member  of  the 
firm  employed  by  Ira  Atkinson  and  Adam 
Stringfellow  several  months  previou.s,  to  find 
!Mvs.  Flowers  and  to  restore  to  her  her  rightful 
heritage,  with  interest,  after  its  long  years  of  pur- 
loined service  had  aided  them  to  amass  colossal 
fortunes. 

For  a  long  time  the  efibrts  of  the  attorneys 
were  discouragingl}^  futile. 

At  length,  however,  late  in  December,  Silas 
Worthington's  eye  chanced  to  fall  on  their  ad- 
vertisement. His  well  disciplined  business  mind 
at  once  recalled  the  circumstance  of  the  Clxrist- 
mas  presents  of  himself  and  Efiie  Edelstein,  sent 
to  the  poor  mountain  widow  in  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  care  and  kindness  bestowed  by  her 
son  on  Lawrence  Pleasington ;  and  he  recalled 
also  the  address,  and  at  once  informed  the  at- 
torneys 


Upon  this  information  the  gentleman  referred 
to,  set  out  personally  to  investigate  whether  or  not 
the  clue  thus  obtained  would  lead  to  the  result 
they  sought  to  accomplish. 

After  a  few  moments'  consultation  with  the 
senior  Harman  and  Jesse  Flowers,  the  interview 
was  arranged  between  the  attorney  and  Mrs. 
Harman,  to  take  place  immediately  in  the  private 
parlor,  in  the  presence  of  the  most  intimate 
friends  of  the  two  families,  as  they  were  before 
the  wedding,  but  now  merged  into  one. 

In  response  to  the  interrogatives  of  the  legal 
man,  Mrs.  Harman  stated  concisely  the  same  points 
which  she  so  fully  and  graphically  detailed  in  the 
chapter,"  The  Mountain  Cabin";  which  satisfied 
him  that  she  was  the  veritable  Gertrude  Flowers 
whom  he  sought;  and  resulted  in  his  declaring 
her  to  be  the  legitimate  heiress  of  "  an  immense 
fortune,  which  he. was  prepared  to  transfer  to 
her." 


CHAPTER  XLL 

THE    ANGEL    AND  THE    FIEND  WRESTLE  WITH    THE 
GRIM    MESSENGER. 

"I  can't  forget  the  day  she  died. 

She  placed  her  hand  upon  my  head, 
And  softly  whispered,  'keep  my  child' 
And  then  they  told  me  she  was  dead." 
•  —Old  Song. 

Such  were  the  lines,  which,  in  her  delirium 
from  a  fiercely  wasting  fever,  the  pale,  patient- 
faced  Sisters  of  Charity,  as  they  anxiously  watched 
beside  her  lowly  cot,  often  heard  ESie  Edelstein 
repeating,  in  the  middle  days  of  January,  1866. 
Thus  her  mind  traveled  back  in  it's  wildly  incoher- 
ent wanderings  to  that  affecting  scene  in  her  ten- 
der childhood  of  the  death  and  the  parting  with  her 
mother;  and  that  other  still  more  recent  and  bit- 
terly cruel  experience  of  persecution  Irom  which 
she  sought  refuge  in  her  present  asylum  for  a  little 
while,there  to  wait  for  that  more  secure  and  endur- 
ing protection  that  always  comes  as  a  grateful  boon 
to  the  pure  in  heart  who  can  find  no  repose  nor 
peace  in  fife — "  the  merciful  quietude  of  the  cold 
and  silent  grave." 

The  diagnosis  of  the  physicians  determined  her 
case  to  be  one  of  pulmonary   consumption,  sud- 


162 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


denly  developed  from  the  deep-rooted  seeds  of  a 
violent  cold;  but,  poorEffie,  how  little  they  knew 
of  the  mysterious  truth 

Let  those  who  desire  to  know  the  veritable 
origin  and  the  actual  nature  of  her  malady  read 
Washington  Irving's  most  beautiful  and  patheti- 
cally tender  essay,  "  The  Broken  Heart."  There 
this  case  is  pictured  in  its  true  and  appropriate 
colors,  so  vividly  natural  that  we  dare  not  at- 
tempt a  description  of  it,  because  to  do  so  would 
be  but  to  produce  something  so  nearly  modeled 
after  this  masterpiece  from  that  matchless  pen, 
as  to  incur  the  risk  of  an^apparently  well-grounded 
charge  of  that  most  detestable  of  all  non-legally 
punishable  crimes — plagiarism. 

Effie  was  ill — confined  to  her  bed — when  she 
heard  of  her  dear  uncle's  death. 

From  this  day,  it  was  but  painfully  evident  to 
her  sympathetic  sisters — among  whom  there  were 
many  hearts  which  had  bled  like  her  own — that 
her  days  were  few.  They  were  satisfied,  before 
the  end  of  the  first  month  of  the  new  year,  that, 
wrapped  in  her  shroud  of  spotless  white,  rivaling 
the  bleached  and  snowy  ermine  that  in  its  purity 
mantled  the  earth,  Effie  Edelstein,  whose  heart 
and  life  had  been  ever  pure  and  spotless  as  that 
snow,  would  be  borne  out  from  the  friendly  shel- 
ter of  the  consecrated  walls  and  bars  which  form 
a  saintly  prison  where  the  weary  soul  may  find 
.peace  and  security  alike  from  persecution's  darts 
and  passion's  flames,  to  the  endless  repose  of  the 
silent  church-yard. 

Her  earthly  wealth  was  bequeathed  to  Orlando 
and  Eva. 

The  same  night  on  which  tidings  of  Effie's  pros- 
pective death  reached  her,  Helen  Mountjoy  took 
poison.  She  lingered  for  ten  days,  was  often  ra- 
tional, and  talked  freely  to  Orlando  and  Eva. 

Remorse  of  conscience  was  preying  upon  her 
withunpityingseverity  every  breath  she  drew,  on 
to  that  which  was  her  last;  when  she  died,  as  she 
had  long  lived,  in  miserable  wretchedness. 


CHAPTER   XLII. 

CONFIDING    THK    DA  UK    SECRET. 

"  A  man  cannot  possess  anything  better  than  a  good 
Woman,  nor  anything  worse  than  a  bad  one." 

— SIMONIDES. 

The  year  1866  was  well  advanced  wken  there 
came  to  G-arland  Cloud  a  letter  from  Orlando 
Oglethrop,  proposing  to  form  a  firm,  to  be  com- 
posed of  himself,  Cloud,  Jesse  Flowers,  and  Edgar 
Harman,  to  be  domiciled  in  New  York,  for  the 
purpose  of  prosecuting  a  dii-ect  Southern  trade 
with  such  Southern  branches  or  connections  as 
might  be  deemed  desirable  and  expedient. 

After  consulting  Flowers  and  Harman,  Cloud 
proceeded  to  New  York  with  their  powei-s  of 
attorney,  to  consummate  the  arrangement.  This 
he  entered  into  with  alacrity,  because  it  opened 
up  to  him  for  the  benefit  of  the  Southern  people 
a  far  more  extended  field  in  which  to  labor. 

The  arrangement  was  completed,  business  to 
open  September  1st,  1867.  It  was  stipulated  that 
Cloud  should  master  the  cotton  trade,  the  art  of 
grading  and  classing.  In  order  to  do  this,  he  at 
once  arranged  to  spend  part  of  the  season  of 
1866-67  in  a  prominent  New  York  office,  and 
at  the  same  time  to  have  his  home  interests  prop- 
erly protected. 

This  plan  was  suggested  l\v  Silas  Worthington, 
who  had  become  Cloud's  warmest  and  most  ad- 
miring friend. 

The  time  for  starting  a  business  such  as  con- 
templated, was  most  propitious.  Rarely,  if  ever, 
was  there  a  firm  organized  with  brighter  or  more 
hope-inspiring  promises  than  those  which  cheered 
the  four  young  men  who  were  preparing  to  em- 
bark in  the  enterprise  just  indicated. 

While  in  New  York,  Cloud  met  and  became 
most  intimate  with  Major  Eugene  Lovelace^  the 
staff  officer  whom  he  captured  in  the  winter  of 
1861-2,  in  the  parlor  of  the  Fairchilds,  where  he 
was  so  happily  entertained  by  Miss  Leonora. 

After  he  has  been  in  New  York  some  two 
months,  he  is  seated  one  night  in  a  private  parlor 
alone  with  Oglethrop,  where  they  had  met  pur- 
suant to  an  appointment. 


CONFIDING  THE  DAEK  SECRET. 


163 


Cloud  :  Well,  Lieutenant,  it  is  of  DOor  Pleas- 
ington  and  his  woes,  and  of  nothing  else,  that  we 
are  to  talk  to-night.  Poor  fellow !  How  I  pity 
liim !  " 

OoLETHRor:  "Yes,  Colonel,  for  that  we  have 
met.  I  have  promised  to  tell  you  something 
about  which  it  makes  my  blood  run  cold  to  think. 
I  may  do  wrong,  but  J  rely  on  your  word  of 
honor  that  in  case  it  can  be  turned  to  no  account 
in  poor  Lawrence's  behalf,  you  will  never  think 
of  it  very  intensely  in  the  presence  of  any  one, 
and  breathe  it  under  no  circumstances." 

Cloud:  "  I  swear  that  it  shall  be  as  securely 
locked  in  my  breast  as  if  it  was  eternally  buried 
in  the  grave." 

Ogletiirop:  "  Oh,  my  Grod!  alas  that  it  is 
my  mother-in-law  of  whom  I  must  speak — a 
name  that  should  be  sacred  and  hallowed.  What 
a  memory  to  associate  with  the  dead  I 

"  She  commenced  to  make  her  confession  to 
Eva  and  I,  about  midnight  of  the  second  night 
after  she  drank  the  poison.  She  was  perfectly 
rational,  and  suffered  the  agonies  of  torment 
while  recounting  the  terrible  deeds. 

"  She  stated  that  her  first  erroneous  step  was 
inducing  Atkinson  and  Stringfellow  to  rob  Mrs. 
Flowers. 

"  Previous  to  this  she  had  conceived  the  idea 
of  a  union  between  these  two  men  and  her  two 
daughters.  Her  object  was,  while  augmenting 
their  store  of  wealth,  thus  to  place  them  in  her 
power,  in  order  to  insure  their  compliance  with  any 
wish  she  might  choose  to  intimate  to  thera.  This 
part  of  her  plot  was  all  that  she  designed  it  to  be. 

"  The  next  was  to  procure  money  to  furnish  the 
princely  wedding  of  her  daughters,  after  she 
learned  her  husband's  distressingly  straitened 
circumstances. 

"  She  skillfully  arranged  to  place  her  two 
daughters  in  the  society,  and  under  the  ostensi- 
ble protection  of  Van  Allen  and  Mortimer,  having 
previously  instructed  the  poor  girls  how  unseemly 
to  conduct  themselves,  with  utmost  ahandon  of 
propriety. 

"The  girls  acted  their  parts  to  perfection. 
They  agreed  to  clandestine  meetings,  and  stipu- 
lated that  they  must  be  at  some  out-of-town  cot- 


tage, which  their  intended  victims  could  rent  and 
furnish  indefinitely;  and  that  as  soon  as  com- 
pleted, they  must  each  write  a  letter  to  each  girl, 
fully  describing  the  locality,  the  time,  the  place, 
and  mode  of  their  first  meeting. 

"  The  letters  were  not  tardy  in  coming,  and 
went,  as  a  matter  of  course,  into  the  mother's 
hands,  who  used  them  so  adroitly  as  to  obtain  all 
the  mpney  she  wanted. 

"After  the  wedding,  her  schemings  wanted 
then  only  the  union  of  Arnold  Noel  and  poor 
Effie  to  make  them  all  a  success  fully  equal  to 
her  cruel  heart's  desire ;  and  she  was  not  slow 
in  her  mind  and  actions  to  conceive  and  put  to 
work  such  machinations  as  she  deemed  would 
insure  the  result  which  she  sought  to  attam. 

"But,  fiendish  horrors!  this  involved  putting 
Lawrence  out  of  the  way. 

"  She  drew,  or  rather  drove,  Atkinson  and 
Stringfellow  into  this  plot;  but  found  so  many 
readily  available  facihties,  that  it  was  not  neces- 
sary to  bring  into  it  her  biddable  son,s-in-law.  I 
am  truly  glad  that  this  stain  is  not  upon  them, 
since  they  have  doubtless  made  restitution  to 
Mrs.  Flowers ;  which  fact  goes  far  toward  prov- 
ing that  but  for  their  mother-in-law's  influence, 
they  might  never  have  been  guilty  of  that  igno- 
minious crime. 

"  It  seems,  from  the  tenor  of  her  narration,  that 
the  most  confidential  teller  in  the  bank  in  which 
Lawrence  was  employed,  the  night  watchman 
and  two  poHcemen  on  the  beats  most  nearly  ad- 
jacent to  the  bank,  were  easily  bought  into  the 
scheme,  with  a  large  sum  of  money — the  balance 
of  that  so  adroitly  extorted  from  Van  Allen  and 
Mortimer. 

"  The  plan  was  this :  On  leaving  the  bank  in 
the  evening,  the  teller  was  to  take  quite  a  large 
sum  of  money  with  him — having  previously  ar- 
ranged with  Lawrence  to  call  for  him  at  his 
home,  to  go  out  together  for  the  evening. 

"  Once  in  the  home  of  Lawrence,  then  there 
was  nothing  more  to  do  than  to  frame  some  pre- 
text to  get  into  his  room,  and  find  an  opportunity 
there  to  conceal  the  money,  where  it  would  be 
found  as  irrefutable  evidence  of  Lawrence's 
guilt. 


164 


MYSTIC   ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND   THE   GREY. 


"  During  the  night,  while  one  of  the  policemen 
•watched,  the  other  was  to  slij)  into  the  bank  the 
back  way  and  tie  the  watchman  hard  and  fast  in 
the  director's  private  room ;  and  the  watchman 
was  to  tell  the  story  that  masked  men  tied  him, 
among  whom  there  was  one  who  knew  the-com- 
bination,  opened  the  safe,  took  the  "money,  and 
then  locked  the  safe  again.  Lawrence  knew  the 
combination. 

"  The  next  day,  when  search  was  instituted  in 
the  houses  and  rooms  of  bank  employes,  be- 
cause of  this  fact  being  stated  that  one  of  the 
robbers  knew  the  combination,  the  money,  or 
rather  about  one-fourth  the  amount  missing,  was 
found  in  poor  Lawrence's  room,  which  speedily 
doomed  him  to  his  present  gloomy  and  hopeless 
fate. 

"  It  seems  that  the  safe  was  not  touched  in  the 
night,  that  stouv  being  merely  a  part  of  the  plan 
to  fix  the  evidence  of  guilt  upon  Lawrence  with 
greater  certainty. 

"  It  was  not,  perhaps,  the  design  of  the  plotters 
to  take  any  more  money  from  the  bank  than  the 
amount  to  be  left  in  Lawrence's  room :  but  the 
opportunity  was  too  good  and  the  temptation  too 
great.  There  can  be  no  doubt  but  that  the  teller 
appropriated  the  balance. 

"  This  made  it  go  much  harder  Avith  Lawrence, 
as  the  bank  officers  and  the  authorities  believed 
that  he  knew  who  had  the  balance  of  the  missing 
money,  and  might  give  them  information  that 
would  lead  to  its  recovery." 

Cloud:  "The  demon's  subtlety!  "Were  the 
angels  from  Heaven  to  come  down  and  testify  to 
poor  Pleasington's  innocence,  no  court  nor  gov- 
ernor would  believe  them.  This  woman's  con- 
fession, had  it  been  legally  taken,  would  have 
no  sort  of  weight,  without  some  evidence 
of  the  guilt  of  the  actual  criminals ;  and  this 
we  cannot  well  get.  Her  testimony  that  she 
liad  employed  those  parties  to  commit  the 
crime,  but  that  she  did  not  see  it  committed, 
and  hence  could  not  have  known  who  did 
commit  it,  would  amount  to  nothing,  not  even 
if  we  had  it  in  shape,  without  corroboration ; 
and  there  can  be  no  corroboration  but  tes- 
timony sufficiently  overwhelming  to  convict  the 


guilty  parties ;   and  that  is  not  within  the  reach 
of  mortal  man." 

Ogletukop:  "Then  you  really  think  we  can 
do  nothing  for  him." 

Cloud  :  "  That  is  worth  no  more  to  Lawrence 
Pleasington  than  a  dream  would  be,  except  to 
convince  two  or  three  of  us  that  he  is  innocent ; 
and  that  amounts  to  noticing  while  all  the  balance 
of  the  world  will  believe  him  guilty.  No,  Lieut. 
Oglethrop,  it  would  be  cruel  to  attempt  to  do 
anything  for  him  with  not  the  ghost  of  a  show 
to  succeed.  Against  the  terrible  array  of  evi- 
dence on  record  against  him  we  have  absolutely 
nothing  to  offer  that  is  either  pertinent  or  plausi- 
ble* a  dying  woman's  confession  made  to  two 
of  her  own  family,  and  those  two  persons 
Pleasington's  devoted  friends. 

"  So  far  as  I  am  concerned,  I  do  not  doubt  but 
this  is  just  how  the  infernal  plot  was  concocted 
and  executed,  in  order  to  blast  Pleasington's  fair 
fame  and  life ;  but  no  governor  would  accept  it 
as  a  basis  upon  which  he  would  consent  to  issue 
a  pardon." 

Oglethrop  :  "  Poor  Lawrence !  then  he  must 
continue  to  drag  out  the  weary  flays  of  long  and 
tedious  years  in  the  dread  hopeless  gloom  of  that 
dreary,  cheerless  prison. 

"  To  think  of  the  misery  and  ruin  that  mis- 
guided woman  has  caused  and  wrought!  Her 
husband  and  Effie  in  -their  graves — Effie  in  a 
hving,  almost  the  real  tomlj — and  Lawrence's 
life  a  thousand  times  worse  than  the  grave. 

"  Mrs.  Flowers  and  her  little  children — the  silent 
sorrow  and  lonely  suffering  she  caused  them  to 
endure,  no  tongue  may  ever  tell  nor  pen  record, 
except  that  terrible  account  of  the  Recording 
Angel. 

"Add  to  all  this,  then,  the  humiliation'  and 
anguish  she  meted  out  to  her  own  daughters,  and 
few  parallels  can  be  found  in  any  age  or  life, 
hardly  excepting  '  Bloody  Lady  Macbeth.'  " 


THE   INTKIGIJE. 


165 


CHAPTER  XLIII. 

THE    INTRIGUE. 

"  Vice  Is  a  monster  of  so  frightful  mien, 
As  to  toe  hated,  needs  but  to  be  seen; 
But,  seen  too  oft,  familiar  witli  her  face, 
We  first  endure,  then  pity,  then  embrace." 

—Pope. 

Lovelace:  "Now,  Col.  Cloud,  I  want  to  tell 
you  that  I  owe  you  an  undying  debt  of  gratitude, 
because  you  did  not  divulge  when  and  hoAv  you 
captured  me ;  and  that  you  thus  saved  me  from 
disgrace. 

"In  consideration  of  this  fact,  I  have  a  plan 
for  you,  to  give  you  for  a  paramour  one  of  the 
handsomest  and  finest  society  ladies  in  this  city 
— a  genuine,  romantic,  free-love  affair,  which  re- 
quires no  money,  and  in  which  you  run  no  risks 
in  any  respect  whatever.  It  is  one  of  those 
peculiar  cases  where  the  lady  wants  a  lover  who 
is  unknown  in  society,  and  not  a  permanent  resi- 
dent in  the  city. 

"  It  comes  about  in  this  way :  Madam  Vais- 
entre  is  a  party  wealthy  and  aristocratic,  a  kind 
of  fortune-teller,  one  whom  the  first  people  visit 
without  scruple,  to  consult  on  any  subject.  In 
this  special  line  of  which  I  am  now  speaking,  she 
is  known  to  but  very  few.  I  am  known  to  her 
to  an  extent  that  she  has  confided  in  me,  to 
select  for  the  lady  named  a  discreet  and  suitable 
companion.  The  lady  has  apphed  to  her  to  find 
her  such  a  person.  As  a  matter  of  course,  I  do 
not  and  cannot  know  who  the  lady  is,  because 
she  belongs  to  the  class  of  society  in  which  I 
move,  and  is  some  one  whom  I  am  liable  to  meet 
in  a  fashionable  gathering  of  the  hon  ton,  any 
evening  during  the  season.  She  knows  that  by 
some  means  the  Madam  finds  gentlemen  well 
vouched  for,  but  that  is  all. 

"I  thought  of  you  the  moment  she  mentioned 
the  subject  to  me,  and  promised  to  carry  you  up 
this  evening.  Neither  Madam  nor  the  lady  must 
know  your  true  identity,  nor  will  you  know  the 
lady's.  She  will  never  call  any  one's  name,  in 
either  society  or  business  circles,  with  whom  she 
is  acquainted;  nor  must  you  breathe  the  name  of 
ain^  one  of  that  class  with  whom  you   may  be 


acquainted,  for  fear  it  might  be,  perchance,  some 
of  her  own  family. 

"  You  will  meet  the  lady  in  the  Madam's  pri- 
vate parlor.  If  you  fancy  each  other,  you  will 
there  arrange  a  subsequent  meeting  at  some 
other  point  indicated  by  the  lady,  but  a  place  of 
the  highest  respectabihty,  where  neither  gentle- 
man nor  lady  would  blush  to  be  seen,  either  going 
to  or  coming  from,  at  any  hour  of  day  or  night. 
Upon  this  you  may  most  implicitly  rely.  That 
you  might  some  time  become  a  resident  of  the 
city  and  a  member  of  society,  is  something  for 
which  I  am  not  responsible.  Just  now  you  are 
about  as  far  from  being  either  as  any  gentleman 
I  know.     You  wiU  go  ?  " 

Cloud  :  "  Well,  Major,  it  is  a  bad  sort  of  an 
affair  to  get  mixed  up  in.  Still,  I  have  some  curi- 
osity to  see  what  this  lady  resembles.  In  that 
there  cannot  be  much  harm." 

Lovelace:  "Ah!  my  friend,  wait  until  you 
know  the  Avays  of  the  world  in  city  life,  and  you 
will  soon  get  bravely  over  your  rural  squeamish- 
ness  about  «uch  matters.  Why,  my  dear  sir,  those 
of  prominence  who  are  not  mixed  up  in  some 
affair  of  this  nature,  form  the  exceptions.  I  do 
not  attempt  to  defend,  but,  to  the  contrary,  de- 
plore the  degenerate  unhealthiness  of  social  moral 
restraint,  that  tolerates  and  fosters  and  renders 
such  conduct  but  mildly  unpopular  in  some  circles 
of  society." 

Pursuant  to  appointment  they  are  in  the  pres- 
ence of  Madam  Vais-entre,  in  her  house. 

Lovelace  :  "  Madam  Vais-entre,  my  friend 
Scud,  of  whom  I  spoke  to  you  last  evening." 

Madam  A^'ais-entre :  "Ah,  I  am  glad  to  know 
you.     Walk  right  in." 

Lovelace:  "You  will  find  me  in  the  billiard- 
room  on  the  next  corner.  Colonel,  when  you  leave 
here.     Good-night,  Madam." 

He  departs,  and  the  Madam,  with  Cloud,  enters 
her  private  parlor. 

Madam  V :   "  Col.  Scud,  Mrs.  Lovewell." 

Mrs.  Lovewell:  "I  am  pleased  to  make  your 
acquaintance,  Colonel,  and  trust  that  we  may  be 
good  friends." 

Cloud  :  "  Thanks,  madam,  and  accept  similar 
sentiments.  I  know  of  no  reason  why  we  should 
be  enemies." 


166 


MYSTIC  KOMANCES   OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE   GREY. 


Madam  V :   "I  will  leave  the  Colonel  in 

your  care  now,  Mrs.  Lovt-weil." 

She  withdraws  from  the  room. 

Mrs.  L :   "Well,  Colonel,  you  understand 

my  desire  for  cultivating  your  friendship  to  be 
the  sole  object  of  my  seeking  your  acquaintance, 
I  presume  ?  " 

Cloud  :  "  Perfectly,  madam,  but  imagine  that 
with  my  ajDpearance  that  desire  vanished." 

Mrs.  L :  "  Just  to  the  contrary.     Are  you 

disposed  to  meet  my  Adews — or  rather  to  meet 
me  again  for  a  more  definite  interview  ?  " 

Cloud:   "Certainly." 

Mrs.  L :  "  Well,  ihen,  go  to-morrow  at  half- 
past  four  in  the  afternoon,  to  the  street  and  num- 
ber indicated  by  this  card.  I  have  rented  the 
house,  which  is  elegantly  furnished,  and  have  it 
in  chai'ge  of  servants.  Ring  the  bell,  and  hand 
the  card  to  the  servant,  who  will  then  admit  you. 
If  I  am  not  there,  you  will  not  have  to  wait  many 
minutes.  Now,  I  must  reluctantly  bid  you  good- 
evening,  as  we  are  not  expected  to  have  a  pro- 
tracted interview  here;  and  then  it  is  time  that  I 
should  be  home." 

Cloud.  "All  right.  You  can  rely  on  seeing 
me." 

The  next  day  Cloud  is  in  the  counting-room  of 
Silas  Worthington,  with  this  gentleman. 

CoL.  Worthington:  "Look  here  now,  Cloud, 
you  have  been  promising  to  dine  with  me  at 
home,  for  a  long  time,  but  you  never  fullfil  j^our 
promise.  This  is  a  dark,  stormy  day,  and  there 
is  nothing  doing.  I  am  going  to  dine  at  home 
to-day,  at  three  o'clock;  and  then  I  am  going 
to  a  directors'  meeting.  Come  to  the  office,  half- 
past  two,  sharp ;  go  up  in  the  carriage  and  dine 
with  me;  then,  if  you  want  to  go  down  town 
again,  I  will  send  the  coachman  with  you;  if  not, 
you  can  remain  and  entertain  the  Madam,  who  is 
all  curiosity  to  see  the  Rebel  Scout,  as  we  all  call 
you.  As  I  have  told  her  that  you  had  promised 
to  dine  with  us,  she  has  been  expecting  you. 

"  Poor  woman,  I  am  such  a  slave  to  business 
that  she,  in  consequence,  passes  many  lonely 
evenings;  but  the  requirements  of  trade  demand 
my  time." 

Cloud:  "I  think  I  can  go  to-daj^  as  well  as 
any  other  time.     Yes,  Colonel,  I  will  go  to-day. 


I  shall  not  want  to  be  down  town  again.     I  will 
be  on  hand  jiromptiy." 

Worthington  :  "  All  right ;  I  shall  depend  on 
it.  I  will  write  the  Madam  a  note  informing 
her  that  she  can  expect  you  with  me,  without 
doubt,  to  dinner  this  afternoon." 

Cloud:  "Then  I  will  go  directly  to  my  head- 
quarters and  make  my  arrangements  accordingl3\" 

Promptly,  Col.  Worthington  and  Garland  Cloud 
arrived  at  the  superb  residence  of  the  former, 
and  entered  the  parlor.  Even  here  the  old  gentle- 
man could  not  refrain  from  talking  on  his  favor- 
ite theme — "  the  new  South  and  her  commercial 
future."  Of  all  others,  this  was  the  one  subject 
tViat  most  interested  young  Cloud.  He  tried  to 
persuade  himself  that  for  this  one  cause — the 
interest  and  prosperity  of  the  decimated  South — 
he  lived;  and  that  besides  this  he  had  no  object 
in  life.  For  these  reasons,  with  eager  avidity,  he 
grasped  the  opportunity  at  all  times  and  under 
all  circumstances,  to  listen  to  the  sage  and  ex- 
perience-matured counsels  and  precepts  which 
his  old  friend  was  ever  so  ready  to  inculcate  and 
impress  into  and  upon  his  susceptible  mind. 

Last  evening  we  saw  Cloud  with  a  Mrs.  Love- 
well,  and  heard  him  make  an  engagement  to 
meet  her  at  half -past  four  this  evening.  In  con- 
sequence of  this  he  feels  a  little  nervous  lest  he 
may  be  detained  at  the  Colonel's  table  and  after 
dinner,  so  long  as  to  be  unable  to  keep  his  en- 
gagement promptly. 

After  the  two  men  have  been  engaged  in  ani- 
mated conversation  some  minutes,  a  rustling  of 
silks  behind  admonishes  them  that  Mrs.  Worth- 
ington is  entering  the  room,  and  that  the  formali- 
ties of  an  introduction  mus't  be  performed. 

The  tall,  athletic  form  of  Cloud  rises  and 
turns  with  true  military  gracefulness  to  face  his 
hostess;  and  the  first  glance  of  his  eye  discovers 
standing  before  him  in  queenly  majesty  a  form 
as  athletic,  almost  as  tall,  and  far  more  graceful 
than  his  own,  and  a  beautiful  face  glowing  with 
tints  of  resplendent  crimson,  but  which,  as  soon 
as  he  is  fully  faced  about  and  has  fixed  his 
piercing  eye  upon  her,  turns  ashy  pale ;  and  she 
trembles  violently. 

Col.  Scud  and  Mrs.  Lovewell  stand  face  to  face. 

This  is  a  dilemma,  a  crisis — perhajis  a  fainting 


THE  INTEIGUE. 


167 


scene.  Never  had  Cloud  exjierienced  a  danger 
for  which  he  would  not  have  gladly  exchanged 
the  embarrassing  position  of  the  present  moment. 
Yet,  as  he  has  often  been  in  those  desperate  games 
when  his  life  was  at  stake,  he  fully  realizes  the 
situation,  and  that  something  must  be  done  to 
avert  a  ruinous  catastrophe.  His  characteristic 
coolness  and  self-control  do  not  forsake  him. 
But  stepping  forward  with  the  most  nonchalant 
sang-froid,  he  extends  his  hand,  and  says,  in  a 
re-assuring  tone: 

"My  dear  madam,  I  am  dehghted  to  make  your 
acquaintance;  and  .can  assure  you  that  I  am  a 
very  quiet,  inoffensive  person,  not  at  all  the  man- 
devouring  character  of  war  repute  as  you  may 
have  pictured  me.  So  calm  your  fears :  I  am  a 
notorious  coward  when  I  have  to  face  a  lady." 

Mrs.  WoRTniNGTON:  "Pardon  my  weakness. 
Colonel.  I  was  like  some  who  ai-e  suddenly 
brought  face  to  face  with  a  being  that  they  have 
learned  to  regard  as  terrible.  The  moment  you 
faced  me,  I  thought  of  the  flashing  sabre  about 
Avhich  I  have  heard  the  soldiers  talk,  and  was 
about  to  utter  a  womanish  scream.  I  would  not 
make  a  very  brave  soldier.  I  am  glad  to  make 
your  acquaintance,  and  extend  to  you  a  cordial 
Avelcome." 

Col.  Worthington:  "You  need  never  laugh  at 
me  again  for  surrendering  to  Col.  Cloud  so 
meekly,  my  dear,  since  his  mere  2:)resence  h«s  so 
much  disconcerted  you." 

Mrs.  W :   "No,  dear,  you  shall  liever  hear 

that  from  me  again." 

By  this  time  the  erratic  young  wife  is  composed, 
and  enters  into  the  conversation  with  an  appar- 
ently hearty  relish. 

The  dinner,  the  small  talk,  etc.,  etc.,  are  per- 
haps similar  to  the  majority  of  such  affairs,  unin- 
teresting often  to  those  who  are  actively  par- 
ticipating in  them. 

Immediately  after  dinner  Col.  Worthington 
takes  his  leave  to  attend  the  meeting  of  directors 
of  a  stock  company,  leaving  Cloud  in  the  care  of 
his  wife. 

After  the  Colonel  is  gone,  the  two  culpables 
look  at  each  other  for  some  moments  in  painful 
suspense,  as  though  they  both  dread  to  speak ; 
but  Cloud  breaks  the  silence. 


Cloud:  "My  God!  Do  I  dream,  or  do  I  see 
with  my  open  eyes?  —  Mrs.  Worthington,  in 
Heaven's  name,  are  you  mad  ?  " 

Mrs.  W :  "Oh!  Col.  Cloud,  this  is  a  judg- 
ment sent  on  me  in  time  to  save  me.  Have  pity 
on  me,  and  do  not  betray  me.  I  have  as  yet 
been  false  to  my  husband  in  my  heart  only.  As 
a  matter  of  course  our  anticipated  meetings  are 
at  an  end,  and  never  again  will  I  be  guilty  of 
such  a  thing.  It  is  my  fault;  do  not  reproach 
I  j'ourself.  What  a  blessing  that  you  came  to  dine 
here  to-day. 

"Col.  Worthington  is  an  angel,  but  so  deeply 
immersed  in  business  that  he  neglects  me,  or  I 
fancy  he  does  neglect  me. 

"Several  of  my  lady  acquaintance  have  told  me 
about  having  lovers ;  and  this  Madam  Vais-entre 
assured  me  that  this  was  quite  fashionable  among 
married  ladies  of  the  first  famihes,  and  that  it 
was  my  only  remedy. 

"Just  to  think  that  the  amiable  and  discreet 
stranger,  as  ignorant  as  a  babe,  of  New  York  and 
its  society,  whom  this  wicked  woman  selected  for 
me,  should  be  my  husband's  esteemed  friend! 
What  an  escape  we  have  both  had  ! 

"This  has  made  a  Christian  of  me,  at  least  on 
that  subject,  no  matter  how  lonely  and  slighted  I 
may  feel. 

"In  your  estimation,  I  am  sunk  low  and  deep 
in  the  seething  gulf  of  infamous  connubial 
infidelity." 

Cloud  :  "  Have  no  fears,  madam.  I  shall  never 
expose  you.  Always  remember  this  day  and  your 
vow.     Farewell." 

Garland  Cloud  leaves  the  threshold  of  his 
friend's  door,  fully  resolved  that  no  sohcitation 
vshall  ever  induce  him  to  darken  it  again.  He  feels 
that  another  weight  is  added  to  his  already  crush- 
ing burden  of  woe.  How  can  he  ever  face  that 
friend  again?  Ever  he  must  feel  and  imagine, 
when  in  his  presence,  that  the  conscience-stricken 
wife  has  made  a  complete  confession  to  her  hus- 
band, making  the  affair  serve  to  exonerate  herself 
as  far  as  possible,  lest  by  some  other  means  he 
might  learn  it,  and  so  colored  as  to  cause  her  to 
appear  in  a  very  unfavorable  light. 

On  the  other  hand,  this  misguided  woman  ever 
trembles  at  the  approach  of  her  husband ;  tearing 


168 


MYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


that  by  some  chance,  he  has  during  the  day  be- 
come acquainted  with  her  secret. 

Thus,  day  after  day,  these  two  persons  suffer  a 
penalty  for  their  indiscretion  that  no  words  can 
measure, — "  that  of  silent  unutterable  dread,  and 
the  shadowy  images  that  are  ever  and  anon  con- 
jured up  as  its  concomitant  horrors." 

Once  more,  the  inexorable  mask  fastens  itself 
on  Cloud  with  still  greater  security,  and  serves  to 
cover  a  second  act,  or  contemplated  one,  which  on 
his  part  is  equally  as  bad. 

Had  the  aifair  progressed,  it  is  doubtful  whether, 
as  long  as  he  did  not  knoAV  that  the  woman  was 
related  to  friends  of  his,  he  would  have  suffered 
much  compunction  of  conscience  relative  thereto. 
He  might  never  have  taken  the  trouble  to  reflect, 
that  although  then  unknown  to  any  member  of 
her  family,  he  was  liable  to  make  the  acquaintance 
of  those  most  intimately  i-elated  to  her;  and  at 
any  time  to  meet  them  with  her  under  circum- 
stances calculated  to  render  the  situation  extreme- 
ly embarrassing. 


CHAPTER  XLIV. 

THE    DAY-DREAM    OF    A    GLOOMY    LIFE. 

"  The  mosses  of  thy  fountain  still  are  sprinkled, 
By  thine  Elyslan  water  drops;  and  the  face 
Of  thy  cave-guarded  spring,  by  time  unwrinkled 
Peeps  forth,  the  meek  eyed  genius  of  the  place." 
— Byeon. 

The  prosperity  of  Cloud's  Virginia  business  is 
undiminished  during  his  sojourn  in  New  York. 
He  returns  home  after  an  absence  of  five  months, 
thoroughly  satisfied  that  he  is  sufficiently  initiated 
in  the  cotton  trade  speedily  to  become  an  adept  in 
the  business. 

He  enters  upon  his  routine  labors  as  though  he 
had  returned  from  a  short  business  trip. 

During  his  absence  from  the  town,  Judge  Har- 
iiian,  the  fatlier  of  Edgar  and  Carrie,  settles  there 
in  order  to  prosecute  a  manufacturing  business  in 
which  he  becomes  largely  interested.  His  resi- 
dence is  some  five  hundred  yards  from  the  town, 
at  "  the  cave  spring." 

Edgar  and  his  Rose,  with  her  brother  Jesse, 
remain  for  the  time  being  at  the  old  mansion, 
many  miles  distant. 


Before  Cloud"s  return,  a  brother  merchant,  who 
hates  him  most  intensely,  and  who  is  also  a  zeal- 
ous church  member  of  the  same  persuasion  as  the 
Harmans,  has  become  intimate  with  the  family, 
and  smitten  by  the  charms  of  Miss  Carrie.  He 
immediately  learns,  however,  how  deeply  and 
firmly  rooted  their  friendship  is  for  Cloud. 

On  arriving  at  home,  Cloud  is  surprised  to  find 
this  man,  if  possible,  a  more  enthusiastic  friend  of 
his  than  the  Judge  himself. 

As  a  matter  of  course,  he  cannot  avoid  an  early 
visit  to  the  father  of  Edgar  Harman  and  the  mother 
of  Jesse  Flowers. 

Miss  Carrie  is  absent  on  a  viiiit  to  the  same  rela- 
tives with  whom  she  was  that  night  staying,  when 
tlie  young  officers  under  Cloud  were  express- 
ing the  vindictive  feelings  which  they  chershied 
for  him. 

The  Judge  and  his  good  lady  much  desire  that 
Cloud  shall  take  a  room  in  their  large  house,  and 
his  meals  at  their  table;  but  this  he  will  not  con- 
sent to  do. 

During  the  temporary  absence  of  the  Judge 
from  the  parlor,  Mrs.  Harman  makes  it  a  point 
to  express  regrets  that  Miss  Carrie  is  absent ;  and 
to  say  that  she  trusts  Cloud  will  not  be  sparing 
with  his  visits  on  her  account  Avhen  she  is  at 
home. 

Carrie  Harman  returns  home  on  the  last  day 
of  April.  The  next  day  there  is  a  May-day  Sun- 
day-school picnic  and  dinner  in  the  grove  near 
her  father's  house.  Cloud  is  a  member  of  the 
active  committee ;  so  is  Miss  Carrie. 

The  weather  is  unusually  warm  for  the  season. 
Cloud  is  at  the  cave  spring  bright  and  early. 
He  has  just  received  pine-apples  and  other  deli- 
cacies by  express  from  Richmond,  and  is  donat- 
ing toward  the  dinner.  These  he  is  jDutting  into 
the  capacious  stone  spring-house,  in  order  that 
they  may  be  cool  by  dinner-time. 

Up  to  this  moment  Cloud  and  Miss  Harman 
have  never  met. 

As  Cloud  comes  out  of  the  spring-house  door, 
which  is  some  six  feet  from  the  mouth  of  tjie 
cave,  whence  issues  the  hmpid,  crystal  spring, 
half  concealed  by  the  shadow  of  the  cave,  close 
to  the  side,  quite  even  with  the  mouth,  with  hair 
half   disheveled,  half    curled   in  nature's  wavy 


THE   DAY-DREAM   OF   A   GLOOMY  LIFE. 


169 


ringlets,  in  nymph-like  beauty  to  rival  Numa's 
fairy-fabled  Egeria,  his  eyes  behold  a  witching 
image — the  graceful  form  of  Carrie  Harman,  of 
whom  he  has  dreamed  so  many  dreary  years, 
amid  so  many  varying  scenes. 

At  one  enthusiastic  bound,  both  her  velvet  hands 
clasp  his  soUtary  hand,  as  in  accents  of  thrilling 
pathos  she  says:  "Oh,  Col.  Cloud!  savior  of  my 
dear  brother,  inspirer  of  all  that  has  been  grand 
and  noble  in  my  life,  am  I  at  last  permitted  to 
thank  you  in  person  for  your  patriotic  kindness 
and  unselfish  devotion  to  poor  Edgar?" 

Cloud:  ''I  am  enraptured  with  pleasure  to 
meet  you  in  this  romantic  spot.  I  tlaought  you 
were  Egeria,  haunting  this  pretty  cave.  For  the 
past  you  have  paid  me  a  thousand  times  over 
again.  I  am  your  debtor.  And  for  the  ecstasy  of 
this  moment,  standing  as  I  am,  almost  in  the 
mouth  of  a  fairy-land  cave  with  "  The  Angel 
of  Consolation,"  no  words  are  adequate  to  the 
occasion;-  nor  yet  to  express  to  you  my  grati- 
tude for  your  angelic  care  of  the  children  of  the 
mountain." 

Carrie:  "  Ah,  Colonel,  upon  these  points  I  see 
that  we  can  never  agree ;  so,  therefore,  we  will 
leave  them  in  the  past,  with  its  other  stories 
and  images  of  dark  and  saddening  scenes.  It  is 
enough  that  we  are  to  labor  together  to-day  in  a 
charming  entertainment,  under  the  auspices  of  a 
cause  so  glorious — a  most  lovable  scene  of  bUss- 
ful  peace,  in  harmonious  accord  with  our  ob- 
scurely visaged  conception  of  what/ishould  be  the 
happy  rest  of  eternity.  You  must  take  no  ex- 
ceptions to  the  rudely  informal  mode  of  my 
greeting.  We  have  been  too  long  friends  now  to 
stand  on  ceremonies  as  to  the  simple  form  of  an 
introduction." 

Cloud:  "You  are  right,  Miss  Carrie  on  all 
these  points.  I  would  not  exchange  this  greeting 
for  a  hundred  introductions;  and  I  deeply  thank 
you  for  having  thus  accorded  me  the  inexpressi- 
ble pleasure  this  meeting  affords,  beyond  what 
there  could  have  been  in  one  occurring  at  any 
other  place,  and  under  different  circumstances. 

"I  am  delighted  with  my  good  fortune  in  hav- 
ing the  honor  of  laboring  with  you  to-day  in  this 
good  cause." 

Carrie  :    "  We  are    exceedingly   fortunate   in 


having  secured  your  services,  together  with  your 
liberal  donation;  for  both  of  which  I  sincerely 
thank  you,  and  at  the  same  time  assure  you  that 
both  will  be  duly  appreciated  by  the  school  and 
the  community. 

"  Colonel,  I  hope  to  be  successful  in  inducing 
you  to  take  an  active  interest  in  our  Sabbath- 
school,  and  in  the  building  of  our  new  church." 

Cloud:  "Certainly;  I  will  do  anything  I  can. 
I  am  a  friend  to  the  good  causes  of  every  nature, 
although  I  lay  no  claims  to  goodness  myself. 

"  I  must  return  to  the  village  now.  I  will  join 
you  promptly  at  the  hour  designated  for  the  com- 
mittee to  meet."  ■ 

Carrie  :  "  I  must  then  introduce  you  to  the 
young  ladies.  The  ladies  here  think  you  are 
a  hermit,  or  exceedingly  selfish.  They  say  you 
avoid  introductions,  and  never  have  made  a 
call.  They  all  have  an  idea  that  you  are  an  old- 
time  friend  of  our  family.  I  told  some  of  them 
that  your  father  claims  you  are  far  more  afraid 
of  a  lady  than  of  a  cannon." 

Cloud:  "If  they  say  anything  about  to-day, 
liereaf  ter,  tell  them  that  I  am  not  afraid  of  "  Angels 
of  Consolation." 

Carrie  :  "  Oh,  now,  Colonel,  that  is  an  unkind 
injunction,  one  I  cannot  obey ;  because  some  of 
them  are  genuine  little  angels,  and  well  qualified 
to  console  the  most  forlorn  heart." 

Cloud  :  "  I  do  not  yet  know  them  in  that  light. 
Let  them  engrave  this  fact  in  bold  relief  by  acts 
that  will  entitle  them  to  this  claim,  and  I  will 
then  recognize  it." 

The  picnic  and  the  dinner  are  a  grand  success. 
Throughout  the  day  G-arland  Cloud  and  Carrie 
Harman  are  inseparable.  Whenever  they  are  not 
actuaMy  at  work,and  passing  from  one  part  of  the 
grounds  to  another  amid  the  beautiful  cedars 
and  pines,  she  is  on  his  arm,  as  though  they  had 
been  intimate  friends  from  childhood.  In  the 
opinion  of  spectators  they  are  the  happiest  couple 
at  the  picnic.  But  most  of  the  people  present  do 
not  regard  this  fact  as  being  an  indication  of  any- 
thing beyond  the  delight  of  two  old  friends  on 
their  first  day  of  meeting  after  a  separation  of 
more  than  six  years. 

To  one  person  this  appearance  of  a  warmly 
attached  intimacy  between  the  youngc  couple  is 


170 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AXD  THE  GKEY. 


bitterly  mortifying,  and  fills  him-Avitli  implacable 
chagrin.  This  individual  is  Walton  Paulona,  the 
merchant  who  is  so  much  attached  to  the  Har- 
raan  family,  so  deeply  fascinated  by  the  charms 
of  Miss  Carrie,  and  wlio  has  suddenly  discovered 
that  he  is  a  firm  friend  to  G-arland  Cloud. 

Time  rolls  on  into  June.  Cloud  has  subscribed 
one-fifth  part  of  the  sum  to  build  the  new  church ; 
and  tlirough  his  New  York  friends  he  has  suppHed 
the  Sunday-school  with  a  handsome  and  exten- 
sive library.  He  is  also  a  teacher  in  the  school  and 
a  regular  attendant  at  church. 

To  and  from  both  these  places  Miss  Harman 
is  always  his  companion.  He  never  attempts  to 
escort,  and  never  makes  a  call  on  any  other 
young  lady.  To  visit  her,  he  will  not  neglect  his 
business ;  but  many  are  the  notes  that  pass  back 
and  forth  between  them  tlii-ough  the  week. 

At  length  Cloud  recognizes  a  fact  that  has  ex- 
isted for  nearly  six  years,  despite  his  efforts  to 
persuade  himself  that  it  has  not:  that  Carrie 
Harman  is  the  dream  of  his  life,  and  the  custodian 
of  his  mortal  fate,  for  weal  or  woe. 

He  at  once  resolves  that  the  reahty  of  this 
question  shall  not  continue  poised  in  doubtful  or 
uncertain  suspense.  He  therefore  makes  an  ap- 
pointment to  call  upon  her  on  a  certain  evening 
during  the  week.  The  elders  are  discreetly  absent; 
thus  he  finds  himself  quietly  alone  in  the  parlor 
with  the  one  woman  who  ever  kindled  within 
his  breast  the  faintest  spark  of  love.  His  heart 
beats  wildly  in  this  supreme  moment  that  is  to 
decide  his  fate ;  far  more  wildly  than  if  he  was 
riding  into  the  jaws  mi.  death.  Yet  he  is  cool,  and 
every  outward  indication  of  emotion  is  absent 
from  his  apparently  serene  face.  He  does  not  hesi- 
tate nor  delay,  but  boldly  approaches  the  subject. 
Cloud:  "I  requested  this  interview,  Miss 
Carrie,  for  the  sole  and  express  purpose  of  speak- 
ing to  you  on  a  most  delicate  subject,  that  may 
be  very  disagreeable,  and  at  the  same  time  very 
vmexpected  and  surprising  to  you.  However, 
be  this  as  it  may,  I  must  speak,  regardless  of  the 
consequences;  and  I  crave  that  you  will  deign  to 
listen  with  all  the  patient  indulgence  and  forbear- 
ance that  your  generous,  tender  heart  can  accord. 

•'  Our  acquaintance  and  friendship  were  germi- 
nated, have  been  cultivated  and  developed  from 


the  moment  that  you  penned  me  the  first  note 
breathing  naught,  dreaming  naught,  but  a  loving 
sister's  gratitude,  up  to  the  moment  you  met  me, 
in  nymph-like  witching  imagery  at  the  mouth  of 
the  cave.  It  has  been  one  unbroken  series  of 
incomprehensibly  strange  realities,  more  marvel- 
ous than  fairy-tale  romance. 

"As  they  progressed,  my  interest  in  them 
became  more  and  more  intensified.  I  persuaded 
myself,  or  fancied  I  persuaded  myself,  that  the 
foundation  of  this  ever-growing  interest  was  my 
devotion  to  the  cause  in  wliich  we  were  mutually 
engaged.  Strange  mutuaUty!  — I  creating,  and 
you  soothing,  mortal  woes. 

"  When  the  lapse  of  time  forced  me  to  admit 
a  deep  sentiment  of  personal  admiration  and  es- 
teem, it  was  that  of  the  nature  of  pure  reverence, 
such  as  I  cherish  for  the  Sisters  of  [Mercy.  Be- 
yond this,  I  strove  to  stay  my  wildest  dreams 
from  straying. 

"  When  the  war  was  ended,  I  deemed  our  rela- 
tions severed.  I  had  not  presumed  to  write  you 
so  much  as  a  friendly  letter  up  to  the  moment  of 
our  meeting  on  that  bright  May  morning. 

"  Instantly  then,  some  strange  spell,  as  if  it 
were  the  magical  touch  of  the  enchanter's  wand, 
possessed  and  thriUed  my  being.  Steadily  and 
persistently  has  it  grown  on  me,  despite  my  vain 
struggles  to  overcome  its  tendency.  I  have  tried 
to  persuade  myself  to  vow  that  I  would  see  you 
no  more,  only  to  find  myself  resolving  to  see  you 
again. 

"  I  was  sensibly  conscious  of  my  folly.  I 
dreaded  the  inevitable  wreck  of  hope  to  which  I 
was  madly  flying ;  but  realized  that  I  was  power- 
less to  resist  the  force  that  impelled  me  onward, 
or  to  escape  its  impending  consequences. 

"I  have  been  a  soldier.  I  am  now  a  man  of 
business.  Neither  position  has  given  me  a  social 
polish.  I  detest  flattery  at  all  times  and  under 
all  circumstances.  In  any  enterprise  I  am  impa- 
tience personified :  cannot  brook  suspense :  must 
rush  on  to  results. 

''  Miss  Carrie,  I  cherish  for  you  the  most  inten- 
sified love :  1  am  not  to  blame.  I  have  struggled 
against,  it  tried  to  persuade  myself  that  I  was 
merely  laboring  under  the  spell  of  some  wild 
hallucination ;  but  all  in  vain. 


THE   DAY-DEEAM   OF   A   GLOOMY   LIFE. 


171 


"  I  dare  not  let  the  situation  remain  in  sus- 
pense. If  this  sentiment  can  be  reciprocated,  I 
must  know  it ;  if  it  be  hopeless,  I  must  know  it. 

"  I  cannot  expect  your  love  to  flow,  if  at  all, 
with  the  same  fierce  spontaneity  as  my  own. 
But  if  the  subject  be  not  repugnant,  and  if  there 
be  merely  a  disposition  to  cultivate  it,  then  I  am 
content. 

"  You  are  the  only  lady  for  whom  I  have  ever 
experienced  this  tender  and  endearing  sentiment. 
A  decision  I  crave  and  await.  No  matter  what 
its  nature,  it  still  will  be  a  mercy." 

Carrie  :  "  This,  Col.  Cloud,  is  an  announcement 
that  takes  me  entirely  by  surprise,  and  finds  me 
altogether  unprepared  to  cope  with  it.  I  deemed 
your  heart  impregnable,  and  have  never,  there- 
fore, permitted  myself  to  dream  of  making  upon 
it  an  impression.  True,  I  have  long  esteemed 
you  as  an  ideal  type  of  bravely  chivalric  nian- 
hood,  and  prized  you  as  a  friend — yes,  a  brother. 
But  had  the  secret  longings  of  mj^  heart  sought 
to  dream  of  more  tender  and  delicate  sentiments, 
the  icy  coldnessof  your  letters  would  have  chilled 
the  little  spark  to  extinction  long  before  it  had 
reached  the  point  of  ignition  to  claim  a  recogni- 
tion even  as  a  spark.  How  then  could  it  ever  have 
produced  a  pure,  fervent  flame  of  love  ? 

"Now,  like  an  overwhelming  tornado,  you  an- 
nounce your  love.  I  can  hardly  believe  my  ears 
but  that  they  are  deceiving  me. 

"This  is  a  very  serious  question.  Col.  Cloud, 
that  demands  calm  reflection  and  mature  con- 
sideration. I  will  so  consider  it,  and  also  counsel 
with  you.  Then  in  due  time,  I  will  express  to  you 
frankly  and  fully  my  decision." 

Cloud  :  "  I  shall  then,  Miss  Carrie,  regard  the 
future  of  this  affair  as  being  not  utterly  hopeless, 
and  thus  feehng,  bid  you  good-night." 

Carrie  :   "  Good-night." 

He  leaves  her  alone  to  muse  and  soliloquize  as 
follows : 

"  Well,  just  what  I  could  not  dare  expect;  and 
had  I  dared  hope,  what,  above  all  things  else,  I 
most  desired :  that  this  man  should  love  me.  My 
sorrowful  day-dream  of  so  many  years,  sorrow- 
ful because  apparently  hopeless,  is  realized.  The 
envied,  prosperous  man,  the  brave  and  untiring 
friend  of-  humanity,  regarded  as  cola  and  indif- 


ferent to  everything  earthly  save  the  cause  iu 
which  he  is  engaged,  wherein  seems  to  be  all  his 
heart  and  soul  in  concentric  combination-^to 
love  with  quick  and  fierce  impetuosity!  Can  I 
believe  it  ?  The  great  wild  fish  that  I  feared  no 
art  could  ever  catch — to  think  that  he  has  been 
entangled  in  Cupid's  meshes  while  I  was  trying 
to  devise  some  skillful  plan  to  capture  him.  I  awi 
fortunate. 

"Oh,  he  fancies  that  his  love  is  wild,  fierce, 
and  heart-consuming,  and  that  mine  must  yet  be 
ignited ;  does  not  even  exist  in  low,  smoldering 
embers.  How  little  these  cold,  matter-of-fact- 
hearted  creatures  know  us  poor,  emotional  girls ! 

"  His  love  is  cold  as  an  Arctic  berg,  compared 
with  the  raging  volcano  that  is  consuming  my 
wildly  throbbing  breast,  and  must  be  suppressed. 
I  must  dissemble  ;  must  consider ;  must  hesitate ; 
must  not,  for  formality's  sake,  reveal  my  pure, 
womanly  emotions,,  while  these  indifferent  men 
may  declare  theirs  at  pleasure.  And  they  may, 
while  we  are  employing  time  to  consider  what 
Ave  had  already,  before  appealed  to,  fully  decided, 
'  be  drawn  away,'  as  they  are  pleased  to  term  it, 
after  some  other  pretty  face,  and  against  this 
we  have  no  security,  not  even  when  their  vows 
have  been  sacredly  sealed!  Inconstant,  treach- 
erous, lieart-breaking  men ! 

"  The  churl !  to  declare  his  love  and  say  good- 
night both  in  the  same  breath ;  thinking  I  was 
too  bashfully  timid  to  look  him  in  the  face.  What 
stupidity!  The  diot!  I  could  listen  to  his  dis- 
cordant strain  until  it  died  into  an  echo,  and  then 
sigh  to  hear  more,  did  it  discourse  only  of  love." 

As  to  Cloud,  for  him  the  sun  seems  to  shine 
brighter  and  the  birds  to  sing  sweeter  than  ever 
sun  had  shone  or  birds  sung  at  any  other  period 
of  life,  since  the  mellow  summer  sunshine  of  his 
own  native  blue  mountains  gleamed  for  him  in 
careless  days  of  dreamy  happj'-  childhood — thosa 
mountains  that  the  last  of  seven  years  is  now 
swiftly  passing  over  since  his  eye  beheld  them, 
with  their  majestic  summits  kissing  the  clouds. 

He  now  realizes,  or  rather  acknowledges  to 
himself,  that  it  was  through  all  the  luring  dream 
of  Carrie  Harman  that  prompted  him  to  conceal 
from  the  world  the  unhappy  nature  of  that  won- 
drous  peril  from  which   Lieut.  Stone   delivered 


172 


MYSTIC   ROMANCES  OF  THE   BLUE  AND  THE   GREY. 


him;  when,  of  all  other  persons  m  the  world,  she 
was  the  one  who  would  have  synapathized  most 
deeply  with  him. 

Now  he  feels  thafe  there  is  no  longer  a  question 
about  the  realization  of  his  dfeam;  and  that  soon 
he  Avill  possess  the  priceless  reward  of  his  far- 
reaching  prudence. 

testacies  of  bliss  are  stoeets  sublime  ivhen  they 
are  not  too  fierce  to  last ! 


CHAPTER   XLV. 

TUE    LONG-CHERISHED     REVENGE. 

"  Hate  and  euvy,  with  visage  blacli, 
And  the  serpent,  Slander,  are  on  thy  track; 
Falsehood  and  guilt,  remorse  and  pride. 
Doubt  and  despair,  in  thy  pathway  glide; 
Never  had  warrior  greater  need  : 
Pause,  and  gird  all  thy  armor  on." 

—BATTLE  OF  Life. 

Franz  Mueller:  "  Well,  Smith,  you  have  been 
to  the  camp  of  Cloud,  our  hated  enemy,  and  find 
him  a  prosperous  and  highly  esteemed  merchant, 
away  out  there  where  he  is  unknown,  so  X  under- 
stand?" 

Smith  Brooks:  "Even  so;  and  he  is  so  pop- 
ular and  powerful  that  I  dared  not  breathe  one 
word  against  him.  The  moment  I  mentioned 
his  name  to  any  one,  even  a  negro,  that  individ- 
ual went  into  raptures  about  Cloud,  extolling  him 
to  the  skies.  He  has  too  good  a  footing  there 
for  us  to  reach  him." 

Mueller:  "And  you  hinted  to  no  one  a  word 
about  his  convictshijs  at  Bay  City,  and  left  him  in 
his  glory  undisturbed,  after  we  have  so  long  and 
diligently  sought  to  find  his  hiding-place?" 

Brooks:  "No.  I  tell  you,  man,  it  would  have 
been  madness.  But  I  made  a  discovery  which 
may  result  in  our  being  able  to  uncover  and  reach 
his  vulnerable  point. 

"Just  to  think  of  it!  Judge  Harman's  daughter, 
the  belle,  you  know,  of  the  adjoining  county  be- 
fore they  moved  away,  is  thought  to  be  engaged 
to  him,  or  in  a  fair  way  to  become  so. 


"  The  Judge  believes  in  Cloud,  perhaps  because 
he  appears  to  be  a  rising  man.  But  you  know 
the  Judge  is  a  stickler  for  honor,  and  much  prides 
himself  on  his  proverbially  renowned  ancestry. 
Might  not  this  be  employed  as  a  means,  and  be  so 
skillfully  brought  to  bear  against  Cloud,  as  to  dis- 
comfit and  ruin  him?" 

Mueller:  "Let  us  see:  Your  brother  wrote 
you  from  Tennessee  that  the  mule- trader  who 
staid  all  night  with  him,  was  one  of  the  guards 
Avho  carried  Cloud  to  the  penitentiary,  and  that 
it  was  positively  the  same  man  who  had  charge 
of  the  execution  of  the  three  Federal  officers  in 
the  early  days  of  April,  1865." 

Brooks  :  "  Then  there  can  be  no  doubt  but 
that  Cloud  escaped  from  the  prison;  because  my 
brother  wrote  as  you  have  said.  How  could 
Cloud  be  at  liberty?  You  know  my  brother  sug- 
gested that  we  keep  a  lookout  for  him,  as  he  was 
smart  enough  to  escape,  and  would  most  likely 
do  it." 

Mueller:  "Yes,  we  have  him  now  at  last. 
You  write  a  letter,  anonymously,  to  Judge  Har- 
man,  merely  stating  that  there  is  a  terrible  dark 
and  mysterious  secret  to  the  community  where 
he  now  is,  against  Cloud,  and  refer  to  me  for 
particulars  and  facts,  and  I  will  picture  him. 
The  Judge  knows  me  personally.  Send  this 
letter  to  your  brother  to  mail.  Did  Cloud  see 
you  ?  " 

Brooks:  "Certainly.  He  showed  me  a  polite 
contempt — a  more  stinging  sarcasm  than  an 
openly  abusive  insult.  His  face  glowed  and  his 
brow  was  haughty  and  defiant  as  when,  on  the 
dark  charger,  he  was  leading  his  blood-thirsty 
squadrons  in  a  furious  charge  on  a  mass  of  flying, 
scattered  infantry." 

Mueller:  "  The  merciless  A-illain.  And  I  sup- 
pose like  he  looked  when  he  had  me  by  the  col- 
lar, and  was  brandishing  his  then  bloody  sword 
over  my  head;  or  as  he  looked  when  he  was 
taking  your  leav^  of  absence  from  you  all,  and 
placing  you  under  guard,  to  be  returned  to  your 
regiment.  Every  dog  has  his  day,  and  ours  is 
coming  now.  How  sweet  to  contemplate  the 
realization  of  our  too  long-deferred  but  now  swiftly 
fierce  revenge." 


THE  LONG-OHEKISHED  REVENGE. 


173 


Thus  is  it  ever  with  the  meaner  mind.  Gar- 
land Cloud  had  risen  by  his  own  exertions,  aided 
by  his  brilliant  genius,  from  the  ranks  to  his  posi- 
tion above  these  men.  They,  possessing  neither 
minds  lofty  enough  to  appreciate  his  merit,  nor 
souls  unselfish  enough  to  rejoice  in  his  success, 
in  their  petty  malice  not  content  with  throwing 
obstacles  in  his  pathway  in  revenge  for  fancied 
injuries  received  at  his  hands,  sought  to  pull  him 
from  the  heights  to  which  by  slow  and  laborious 
ascent  he  had  climbed.  They  fancied  by  dis- 
honoring him  and  dimming  the  lustre  of  his 
bright  name,  their  own  tarnished  titles  would 
gain  lustre  from  the  fallen  brightness;  as  others 
beside  them  are  striving  every  day  to  mount  to  the 
stairs  of  their  ambition  upon  the  ruin  and  lifeless 
bodies  of  those,  they,  in  their  eager  struggle,  cast 
lieneath  their  feet. 

But  Revenge, — twin  sister  of  Hate,  more  power- 
ful than  princes,  stronger  than  the  boasted 
strength  of  Israel's  prophet,  deceived  by  a  wo- 
man's false-hearted  smiles,  more  potent  than  all 
the  creeds  of  ancient  pagan  or  modern  Christian, 
blacker  than  the  waters  of  the  dark  river  when 
Charon,  in  its  gloomy  midnight  rows  his  craft, 
— had  entered  into  the  hearts  of  these  men,  and 
impelled  them  to  plan  and  create  the  cruel  down- 
fall and  the  merciless  destruction  of  Garland 
Cloud. 


CHATTER  XLVI. 

WORK-A-DAY   SKETCHES   OF    BUSINESS    LIFE. 

"But  the  youthful  form  grows  wasted  and  weak, 
And  sunken  and  wan  is  the  rounded  cheek  : 
The  brow  is  furrowed,  but  not  with  years  : 
The  eye  Is  dimmed  with  Its  secret  tears  : 
And  streaked  with  white  is  the  raven  hair; 
These  are  the  tokens  of  the  conflict  there." 

—BATTLE  OF  LIFE. 

Garland  Cloud  is  in  his  office.  The  railroad 
agent  enters. 

LoRENzi:  "Can  you  give  me  a  memorandum, 
Colonel,  of  the  cars  you  are  loading,  as  I  want  to 
make  up  my  wa^-bill?" 

Cloud  :  "  Certainly,  Mr.  Agent.  Be  seated.  I 
will  go  into  the  ware-house  for  it  at  once,  and 
return  directly." 


He  goes  out,  and  soon  a  gentleman  enters. 

Da:Ro  :  "Why,  how  are  you,  Mr.  Agent  ?  Where 
Is  Col.  Cloud?" 

LoRENZi:  "Why  this  is  the  gentleman  for 
whom  he  bought  so  much  grain  when  he  first 
came  here.  He  has  jugt  stepped  out  into  the 
ware-house  for  a  moment.  Be  seated.  Glad  to 
see  you,  sir." 

DaSo  :  "Yes  sir,  he  served  our  interests  faith- 
fully.    I  understand  he  prospers." 

L :  "  He  is  the  best  send  the  farmers  of  this 

section  ever  had.  He  works  incessantly  almost 
day  and  night.  He  is  sober  and  charitable,  but 
no  allurement  can  tempt  him  from  business..  The 
young  people  are  piqued  because  they  can  never 
get  him  to  a  party.  I  am  sure  there  are  weeks 
that  he  never  undresses  at  night  nor  sleeps  in  a 
bed." 

DaNo  :  "  He  was  the  same  way  in  the  army, 
from  the  time  I  first  knew  him  a  private  soldier 
until  the  war  closed.  He  would  lay  by  a  fire 
nearly  all  night,  studying  tactics  and  army  regu- 
lations, which  he  could  retain,  master,  and  put 
into  execution  so  thoroughly  as  to  standjon  a  par 
with  old  graduated  officers.     But  here  he  comes." 

Cloud  •  '  Here  is  your  memorandum,  Mr. 
Agent.  Why  Mr.  Daiio,  what  wind  blew  you 
hither?    Some  good  one  I  hope.  How  are  you?  " 

Dano:  "I  am  quite  well,  thank  you.  I  came 
down  to  see  you  relative  to  an  arrangement  to 
control  the  wheat  crop  of  this  section  and  upper, 
middle  and  East  Tennessee  in  the  interest  of  some 
large  exporters  and  extensive  mills.  Can  you  go 
into  it,  and  arrange  your  affairs  to  be  absent  from 
your  business  here  three  or  four  weeks  right 
away  ?  " 

Cloud:  "Certainly,  provided  it  pays.  The 
agent's  brother  Charles  is  my  confidential  man, 
an  excellent  and  a  good  one,  too." 

Da^o:  "Come  up,  then,  Saturday  night  and 
remain  over  Sunday." 

Cloud:  "Very  well.  We  will  then  have  time 
plenty  to  talk  over  the  matter  and  arrange  the 
details." 

DaiJo:  "  Then  good  afternoon.  I  shall  depend 
upon  you." 

Cloud  :  "  If  I  am  able  to  get  there,  you  will  see 
me.     Good-day,  sir." 


174: 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


He  departs  and  Charles  Lorenzi  enters. 

Chas.  Lorenzi:  "Ha!  Colonel,  I  just  saw  Miss. 
Carrie  at  the  depot,  seeing  her  cousins  off"  on  the 
train;  and  when  Mr.  Dano  spoke  to  her  and  told 
her  that  his  business  here  was  with  you,  you 
should  have  seen  how  she  blushed  and  lilushed. 
I  tell  you  she  loves  you,  sure  as  we  live." 

Cloud  :  "  It  is  a  pity  that  you  are  not  a  girl. 
You  think  of  nothing  but  girls  and  love.  I  find 
your  Miss  Bettie's  name  all  over  the  blotters  and 
in  sundry  other  places.  The  drawing-room 
claims  these  frail  sentimentalities:  this  is  no  place 
for  them. 

"I*  want  you  to  put  on  your  soberest  steady 
cap,  for  I  am  going  away  on  to-morrow's  after- 
noon train,  to  be  ab.sent  some  weeks." 

Chas.  L  - — :  "  All,  right  sir.  Everything  is 
shipped,  I  will  go  to  supper." 

He  goes  out,  and  Charley,  the  colored  porter, 
comes  in. 

Cloud  :  "  How  now,  Charley,  Satan's  sleep  imp  ? 
Are  you  ready  to  begin  to  load  those  cars?  It 
must  be  done  before  we  sleep." 

Charley  :  "  Yah,  sah,  all  redde,  sah.  I  dis  cum 
in  specting  may  be  ye  wants  me  to  take  note  ober 
to  Miss  Carrie.  Seed  her  dis  eben.  She  look  at 
me  mite  strate,  like  she  spects  note.  Golly,  I  jis 
likes  to  take  notes  to  dat  lade." 

Cloud:  "No  boy,  not  to-night.  Car  are  too 
scarce  and  demurrage  too  sure  to  wastt  time  with 
Cupid's  whims.  Weightier  things  are  on  my  mind 
noAV." 

Charley  :  "Bery  well  den,  Ize  dis  goen  to  slmb 
dem  niggers." 

Charley  goes  out,  and  Judge  Harman  and  Paul- 
ona  enter. 

Judge  Harman:  "Always  at  work,  Colonel. 
How  are  you  this  evening?  " 

Cloud:  "Yes,  gentlemen,  you  know  the  pen- 
alty of  '  the  sweat  of  the  brow.'  I  am  striving  to 
fulfill  the  sentence  to  the  best  of  my  ability,  but 
think  that  just  now,  in  fulfilling  it,  I  am  serving 
the  farmers  and  the  raihroads  more  than  any  one 
else;  which  I  suppose  may  be  also  a  duty. 

Paulona:-  "I  called.  Colonel,  to  see  if  I  could 
buy  some  drafts." 

Cloud  :  "  All  you  want.  I  need  piles  of  cur- 
rency.      It  is  quite    difficult  just    now    to  get 


cars  to  move  stuff,  but  that  does  not  diminish  the 
demand  for  money." 

Judge  H :   "  You  seem  to  be  the  Exchange 

Bank  here,  Colonel. 

"  It  was  very  kind  in  you  to  advance  the  entire 
amount  of  your  large  subscription  to  the  Church 
Building  Fund,  and  the  committee  thanks  you. 
By  the  way,  you  failed  to  attend  the  meeting 
today." 

Cloud  :  "  In  the  exchange  business,  the  advan- 
A'antage  is  mostly  in  my  favor.  As  to  the  sub- 
scription, it  had  to  be  paid  some  time ;  3'ou  need- 
ed the  money,  and  so  I  thought  it  best  to  wipe  out 
my  part  of  it.  At  the  hour  of  your  committee- 
meeting,  my  friend  DaHo  was  here,  which  kept 
me  away." 

Judge  H :  "I  regret  that  you  did  not  call 

while  my  nieces  were  here.  They  were  anxious 
to  see  you,  because  so  many  of  their  relatives 
t.nd  friends  served  under  you,  and  on  account  of 
the  stories  they  have  heard  those  soldiers  tell 
about  you." 

Cloud:  "I  am  sorry  that  I  did  not  have  time 
to  call.  Well,  gentlemen,  call  again.  I  am  always 
glad  to  see  you.     Good-night." 

They  leave  Cloud  alone  to  continue  his  work. 

Charley  [coming  singing]:  "  'Twill  cause  you  all 
to  shed  a  tear,  o'er  the  grave  of  my  sweet  Kittle 
Wells." 

Cloud:   "Charley,  those  lines 

'  Sometimes  I  wish  that  I  was  dead. 
And  laid  beside  liei-  in  the  tomb— 

The  sorrows  that  bow  down  my  head'. 
Are  silent  as  the  midnight  gloom.' 


have  always  impressed  me  most  seriously." 

Charley:  "GoUy,  I,  don't  wonder  at  dat, 
kase  you  seze  mo'  ob  de  mid-nites  dan  any  odder 
man  in  dese  diggens.  Oh,  Lorde !  dis  nigger  ii;e 
tired  an'  sleepe,  fur  shurc." 

Cloud:  "  Give  me  two  or  three  licks  of  '  the 
break-down, '  and  then  to  your  pallet." 

Charley  dances  furiously  for  several  minutes. 

Charley:  "Golly,  boss,  dat  makes  me  swete." 

Later  in  the  night  the  room  is  dark;  a  noise 
wakes  Cloud. 

Cloud:  "Charles!     Oh,  Charles! 

Charley:   "Sah." 

Cloud:  "What  is  that  noise,  boy?" 


WORK-A-DAY   iSIvETCHES  OF  BUSINESS  LIFE. 


116 


Charley:  "Somebody  rolen'  bacco  outen  de 
war-house.  Ize  been  waked  up  by  it,  but  waze 
frade  to  call  you." 

Cloud:  "No  gun,  no  pistol,  and  no  anything. 
Where  is  the  axe?" 

Charley:  "De  axe  down  in  de  war-house. 
Wherze  you  gwine,  boss?  Les  get  outen  de 
bake  door.  It'll  hurt  our  feet  to  jup  out  de  up- 
stair winder.  GroUy,  dayze  up  dare  too.  Ah,  Ize 
getten  behind  de  desk.  Don't  go  in  de  war- 
house,  boss." 

Cloud  :  "  Come  out  of  there,  coward.  It  is  noth- 
ing but  hogs  rooting  the  big  scales  about  on  the 
outside  platform,  and  raising  up  and  letting  one 
edge  fall.  You  big  fool,  to  think  I  would  jump 
from  a  window.  I  went  up  there  to  try  to  look 
out  at  the  front  window,  and  finding  it  nailed  up, 
was  why  I  hurried  down-stairs." 


CHAPTER    XLVII. 

THE      BITTER      FRUIT      OF     RETRIBUTION. 

"He  who  ascends  the  mountain  top  shall  find 

The  loftiest  peaks  most  wrapt  in  clouds  and  snow ; 
He  who  surpasses  or  subdues  mankind, 

Must  look  down  on  the  hate  of  those  below. 
Though  high  above  the  sun  of  glory  glow, 

And  far  beneath,  the  earth  and  ocean  spread, 
Round  him  are  ley  rocks,  and  loudly  blow 

Contending  tempests  on  his  naked  head. 
And  thus  rewai'd  the  toils  which  to  those  summits  led" 

—BYRON. 

Nothing  in  this  world  of  woe  is  so  sure  and 
'inevitable  as  retribution  in  some  shape,  either 
mental,  physical  or  social,  one  if  not  all,  for  mis- 
deeds. Violating  either  the  laws  of  nature,  the 
laws  of  the  social  circle  in  which  we  move,  or  the 
laws  of  the  land,  constitute  the  grand  errors  and 
crimes  of  mortal  life. 

It  is  such  misdeeds  and  their  retribution  that 
produce  nearly  all  the  woe  and  wretchedness  that 
afflict,  with  a  scourge-like  curse,  so  many  fami- 
hes ;  and  so  cruelly  disturb  the  peace  and  well- 
being  of  society  all  over  this  busy  and  prosper- 
ous world. 

Retribution  may,  and  often  does,  come  tardily  ; 
but  then  it  is  apt  to  come  at  a  time  and  in  a 
shape  not  expected,  and  hence  strikes  heavily. 

Not  unfrequently,  a  towering  ambition  to  rise 


in  the  gradation  scale  in  some  sphere  where 
promotions  and  honors  are  to  be  sought  and 
attained,  or  to  achieve  success  in  the  ordinary 
battles  of  life,  prove  tp  be  the  means  of  drawing 
down  upon  mankind  consequences  almost  as 
direful  and  as  terrible  as  the  retribution  entailed 
as  a  direct  legacy,  which  misdeeds  bequeath. 
Hence  all  are,  if  neither  misdeeds  nor  mistakes, 
certainly  misfortunes  ;  especially  when  they  cre- 
ate such  detrimental  results. 

If  they  do  not  thus  prove,  it  is  never  because 
there  are  not  people  to  create  and  help  forward 
.such  ill-breeding  consequences ;  people  too,  who 
are  in  the  same  walks  of  life  from  which  the 
aspirant  has  emerged,  and  who  were  his  warmest 
friends  before  he  started  on  the  ascent  up  the 
sHppery  steep  in  his  desperate  struggle  to  reach 
the  pinnacle  of  Fame, or  the  height  of  earthly  Glory. 

This  is  an  innate  proneness  inseparable  from 
human  nature,  and  the  legitimate  oflfspring  of 
jealousy  and  envy.  To  a  majority  of  this  class  of 
people,  the  discomfiture  or  the  fall  of  their  rising 
fellow-being,  is  a  source  of  secret,  if  not  of  ex- 
pressed, gratification;  although  the  aspirations  at 
which  he  aimed  were  moderate,  certainly  by 
no  means  inordinate,  yet  sufficiently  elevating 
above  the  plane  from  which  he  has  risen  or  is 
striving  to  rise,  to  alienate  from  him  both  the 
sympathy  and  friendship,  as  well  as  the  afi'ection, 
of  those  whom  he  has  left  or  seeks  to  leave 
below. 

That  he  aspires  to  benefit  or  is  actually  benefit- 
ing them,  often  makes  not  the  shghtest  differ- 
ence ;  for  if  they  have  not  struck,  nor  even  aided 
and  abetted  the  striking  of  the  fatal  blow,  they 
will  feel  a  sense  of  consolation  springing  from 
the  conscious  certainty  that  it  has  been  struck, 
and  effectually. 

It  matters  not  how  kindly  and  even  consider- 
ably condescending  he  may  be  toward  them,  they 
are  sure  to  deem  him  overbearing  and  proud,  and 
certain  to  consider  him  as  continually  scornfully 
snubbing  or  ridiculing  them.  This  latter  remark 
may  apply  more  forcibly  to  the  middle  walks  of 
life  and  downward,  than  to  the  classes  above  the 
intermediate  line. 

From  a  very  close  scrutiny  of  G-arland  Cloud's 
career,  we  perceive  in  him,  deeply  rooted,  this 


176 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


ambition.  Perhaps  this  is  his  in  an  extremely- 
inordinate  degree,  coupled  with  a  tireless,  cease- 
less, almost  sleepless  perseverance,  supported  by 
an  indomitable  will  guided  by  a  calmly  nerved 
hand.  These  attributes  are  usually  supported 
by  masterful  self-control,  .and  directed  by  the 
dictates  of  a  cool  judgment,  ever  impelling  its 
possessor,  obstinately  driving  him,  often  slovi'ly, 
yet  still  steadily  and  patiently,  onward  over  one 
obstacle  after  another,  inch  after  inch,  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  objects  which  he. set  .out  to  attain ; 
and  Avhich,  once  seeing,  he  ever  keeps  in  view, 
never  faltering,  nor  hesitating,  nor  turning  back 
in  that  discouraging  and  dangerous  course. 

From  the  very  outset.  Cloud  seems  to  have 
fairly  reahzed  the  situation  and  the  nature  of  the 
obstacles  which  he  must  surmount,  and  to  have 
determined  to  do  this  alone  and  unaided.  In 
r«is  his  extreme  youth  appears  to  have  been  the 
most  retarding  obstacle. 

It  would  seem,  from  the  fact  that  he  cut  loose 
from  both  kindred  and  neighbors  when  embark- 
ing in  the  fatal  ship  of  the  "Lost  Cause,"  that  he 
then  knew  enough  about  the  weakness  of  human 
nature  to  withhold  him  from  making  the  attempt 
to  rise  among  them  or  to  allow  them  to  aid  him 
in  so  doing,  when  he  declined  to  permit  them  to 
elevate  him  several  rounds  up  the  ladder,  and 
announced,  "I  will  rise  from  the  ranks  or  die  in 
the  ranks." 

Dreading  the  ridicule  that  failure  always  at- 
taches to  those  who  attempt  the  seemingly  unrea- 
sonable, we  never  find  him  confiding  to  any  one 
the  nature  of _  his  aspirations,  nor  seeking  recog- 
nition for  any  dreamy  claim  to  merit  which  he 
may  have  cherished,  and  which  he  doubtless  did 
cherish. 

Twenty-eight  months  in  the  ranks  of  an  infan- 
try regiment  did  not  seem  much  like  fighting  out 
of  the  ranks  any  other  way  than  into  the  grave ; 
yet  at  last  we  saw  him  suddenly  rise. 

From  the  picket  bivouac  and  the  out-post  ser- 
vice of  1861  up  to  the  last  interview  with  her, 
that  Carrie  Harman,  although  for  so  many  years 
but  the  spectral  shadoAV  of  a  most  forlorn  and  to 
Cloud's  mind,  clearly  ill-fated  hope,  was  the  in- 
spiring genius  of  many,  if  not  all  of  his  acts,  is 
too  obvious  to  admit  a  discussion;  and  to  the 


inHuenee  of  tln.s  hapless  spell  we  can  safely  at- 
tribute his  greatest  misfortune :  concealing  the 
sequence  of  "  the  mistaken  identity." 

Ilis  present  relations  v.-ith  her,  and  position 
and  prosjiects  in  the  commercial  world,  are  such 
as  to  provoke  the  envy  of  those  who  have  been 
his  most  appreciative  friends  for  two  years,  in 
the  region  of  his  domicile.  These  were  people, 
who,  had  .she  not  appeared  on  the  scene,  and  her 
society  been  so  thoroughly  monopolized  by  him, 
would  never  have  been  inclined  to  harbor  one 
spark  of  envy  or  one  unkind  feeling  against  him  ; 
but  who  are  now,  for  all  these  reasons  combined, 
nevertheless-,  in  a  state  of  mind  to  be  prepared 
not  seriously  to  regret  his  downfall. 

As  to  Mueller  and  his  accomplices,  their  origi- 
nal grounds  of  hatred,  upon  which  they  based  the 
oath  of  vengeance,  would  never  have  been  mani- 
fested against  any  other  officer  on  account  of  a 
similar  discharge  of  duty,  except  alone  G-arland 
Cloud,  their  hitherto  own  humble  neighbor. 

Several  persons  are  together  in  Paulona's 
office. 

Paulona  :  "  Well,  Judge,  Mueller's  letter  in  re- 
ply to  yours  is  rough  on  Col.  Cloud.  A  terrible 
shock  to  the  community,  if  it  be  true." 

Judge  Harman:  "Yes;  but  I  believe  it  a  base 
concoction  of  falsehood." 

Paulona:  "So  do  I;  yet  still  I  think  it  too 
grave  to  be  disregarded.  I  deem  it  your  duty  to 
all  parties  to  write  to  the  warden  of  the  peni- 
tentiary at  Bay  City,  and  ascertain  the  truth  or 
the  falsehood  of  this  grave  charge.  Furthermore. 
I  would  suggest  that  Charles  Lorenzi  write  to  the 
Colonel,  and  give  him,  in  the  meantime,  a  chance 
either  to  explain  or  refute  this  accusation. 

"We  should  not  condemn  an  innocent  man, 
nor  can  the  community  afford  to  permit  an  im- 
postor to  sail  about  among  its  citizens  under  the 
colors  of  a  gentleman.  Where  is  the  Colonel 
now,  Charles?" 

Charles    Lorenzi:     "His   address    is    K . 

Judge,  I  think  Paulona  is  right  about  this,  ard 
that  I  should  write  fully  by  this  mail." 

Judge  Harman:  "Perhaps  so;  then  we  will 
both  write,  as  suggested." 

They  separate.  The  same  evening  the  Judge 
is  at  home  and  unusually  serious. 


THE  BITTER  FRUIT  OF  RETRIBUTION. 


177 


Carrie  :  "  Why  are  you  so  morose  this  even- 
ing, dear  father?  Are  you  unwell,  or  what  has 
liappened?" 

Judge  H :  "  I  have  always,  in  every  pos- 
sible way,  encouraged  your  friendship  for  Col. 
Cloud;  but  read  this  terrilole  letter,  Carrie,  my 
child,  and  find,  if  it  be  true,  how  sadly  we  are 
both  disappointcil  in  our  estimation  of  the  real 
character  of  this  seemingly  admirable  man. 
Should  it  prove  true  that  he  is  false  and  un- 
worthy, I  can  never  again  fix  in  my  mind  an 
ideal  of  true  and  perfect  manhood — hardl}^  trust 
any  one." 

Carrie  :  "  It  is  false,  my  father.  It  is  but  the 
cowardly  stab  of  an  enemy,  through  the  whisper- 
ing medium  of  vile  slander — the  Satanic  subterfuge 
of  calumnious  obloquy,  designed  to  blast  the  hopes 
and  the  life  of  a  man  on  whom  Fortune  deigns  to 
smile. 

"  Wouid  a  base  and  degraded  man  pursue  the 
high,  the  useful,  and  the  noble  calling  in  which 
he  is  so  helplessly  yet  devotedly  enslaved  ?  I 
say  no,  a  thousand  times  no.  Not  because  he  is 
an  esteemed  friend,  but  because  it  is  his  meed 
of  merit  that  I  would  accord  were  he  an  utter 
stranger." 

Judge  H :   "Well,  fond  girl,  I  would,  were 

I  in  your  place,  not  write'^o  him  again  until  the 
matter  is  cleared  up.     Good  night." 

He  retires  and  leaves  her  alone  in  the  parlor. 

Carrie  [Solus]:  "Palsied  be  the  hand  that 
penned,  accursed  be  the  brain  that  conceived,  this 
all  blighting  slander,  more  fell  and  destructive 
than  the  contagious  breath  of  the  pestilence.  It 
is  already  sapping  my  vitality.  I  feel  the  venom- 
ous fangs  buried  in  my  young  and  affection- 
ate heart,  the  poison  coursing  through  my  veins. 
Would  that  I  had  given  him  my  true  heart's  an- 
swer, and  gone  with  him  immediately  to  the  altar, 
before  there  was  a  chance  for  the  grim  shadow 
of  this  horrid  ghost  to  estrange  him  from  me. 
Oh  that  I  could  see  and  reassure  him  this  night!" 

Some  days  later  the  Judge,  Charles  Lorenzi 
and  Paulona  are  again  in  the  latter's  office. 

Judge   H :    "Well,   gentlemen,   here  is  a 

conclusive  telegram  from  the  warden,  branding 
the  charge  against  Col.  Cloud  as  a  base  falsehood, 
just  as  I  told  you.  I  am  ashamed  that  I  did  not 
d2 


burn  th(^  anonymous  letter,  and  never  breathe  its 
nature,  instead  of  writing  to  that  most  execrable 
Dutchman." 

Paulona:  "That  is  indeed  gratifying." 

Charles  Lorenzi  :  "  That  is  the  best  news  I 
have  heard  since  the  war." 

The  railroad  agent  now  enters  the  office. 

Lorenzi:  "Mr.  Paulona,  here  is  an  express 
package  from  Col,  Cloud  for  you." 

Paulona  :  "  A  special  power  of  attorney.  Here 
is  a  conundrum." 

Charley  now  comes  hurriedly  in  with  a  letter. 

Charley  :  "  Massah  Charles,  herze  a  letter 
from  de  boss  man,  sure." 

Charles  Lorenzi  reads  the  letter,  turns  ghastly 
pale,  and  trembles  like  an  aspen-leaf  before  the 
mad  breath  of  the  tempest;  then  he  reads  it 
aloud : 

"  K ,  Tenn.,  August  4th,  1867. 

"'Mr.  Chas.  Lorenzi: 
"  Dear  Sir : 

"  '  The  contents  of  your  letter 
startled  and  shocked  me  more  than  a  clap  of 
thunder  from  a  clear  sky,  and  as  much  as  the 
terrors  of  Doom's-day  itself  could  have  done.  A 
credited  slander  is  as  blighting  to  my  prospects, 
hopes,  and  future  of  this  life  as  any  truth  could 
be,  however  damnable.  So  true  is  this,  that  it 
renders  the  ill  unbearable. 

"  'Ere  this  scrawl  is  read  by  you,  the  hand  that 
pens  it,  and  the  heart  that  never  recoiled  before 
a  mortal  danger,  will  be  cold  and  still  in  the  icy 
embrace  of  death,  beneath  the  rippling  bosom  of 
the  waters  of  the  Tennessee. 

"A  long  and  hopeless  farewell. 

"  Your  desperate  friend, 

"  Garland  Cloud." 


All  :  "  Oh,  horrors !  what  have  we  caused  ?  " 
Charley  :  "  Oh  Lorde !    Oh  Lorde  !  Wo-a-day ! 
De  onle  frend  ob  dis  pore  chile  ded.     Misable 
me !    Oh  Lorde!  whatze  gwine  ter  become  ob  me 
now  ?  " 

Charley  rushes  out  into  the  street  and  past  the 
dejjot,  where,  while  still  lamenting  as  if  his  poor 
true  and  faithful  heart  will  break,  he  suddenly 
meets  Miss  Harman,  who  accosts  him : 


178 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES   OF  THE  BLUE  AND   THE   GREY. 


"  Charley,  in  Heaven's  name,  what  lias  hap- 
pened to  you  ?  " 

CiiARLEv:  "Oh,  alack,  missus!  my  ondliest 
frend  ded — drowned — poor  nigger  got  nuffen  left 
him  now." 

Carrie;  "Who  is  dead?     Speak,  boy!" 

Charley  :  Oh,  missus  I  dis  am  an  ebel  hour — a 
sorry  day  I  My  ondliest  friend,  Col.  Cloud,  ded 
missus;  de  life  an'  lite  of  dis  town  done  fade 
away  an'  done  gone  out,  an'  ebery  ding  will  be 
ded  again.     G-od  help  us,  missus!" 

Carrie:  "Oh,  my  Grod!  I  must  go  home. 
Oh,  alas,  thou  crudest  of  all  fates,  thou  heart- 
severing  death !  Envious  Heaven,  to  permit  me 
such  delusive  dreams  I  Cruel,  heartless  man,  thus 
to  destroy  them  I  Break,  my  surging  heart,  poor 
bankrupt  of  wild,  inconstant  anticipations !  Hope, 
doff  thy  joyous  plumage,  cease  thy  airy  flights, 
and  fold  thy  reckless  wings  on  the  baneful  Upas' 
all-blighting  branch,  and  seek  solace  from  its 
deadly,  agony-breathing  nectar. 

"  What  more  of  life  remains  for  me  to  live  ?  I 
am  but  one  more  victim  of  the  broken  heart, 
doomed  to  pine  away  my  weary  existence  in  un- 
pitied  silence! 

"Poor  Effie  Edlestein!  now  I  know  the  bitter 
depths  of  thy  nameless  woe  !  " 

Miss  Harman  goes  into  mourning,  and  with- 
draws from  society. 

Miserable  Cloud  I  Could  he  have  known  the 
constant  intensity  of  this  woman's  devotion,  and 
realized  the  cruel  wound  which  his  desperate 
stab  would  inflict  in  her  pure  and  tender  heart, 
surely  he  would  never  have  so  unfeelingly  blight- 
ed her  fair  young  life. 

But,  poor  wretch,  how  could  he  know  this  ? 
He  had  passed  less  than  one  dozen  Sabbaths  in 
her  society,  and  one  other  evening — that  on 
which  he  declared  his  love.  It  was  on  this  even- 
ling  only,  that  any  tender  relations  between 
themselves  had  ever  been  mentioned.  At  all 
other  times  their  conversation  had  been  confined 
exclusively  to  the  labors  in  which  they  had  been 
engaged  and  the  scenes  through  which  they  had 
passed  in  the  by-gone  time;  or  to  projects  for  the 
alleviation  of  suffering  humanity  in  the  future. 
This  was  all. 

Between  them,  the  social  gulf  of  the  olden- 


time  had  been  broad, deep,  and  impassable ;  heuce  it 
could  have  been  only  with  misgivings  that  Cloud 
finally  introduced  the  delicate  subject.  When  he 
said  good-night  to  her  that  evening,  how  little  he 
then  dreamed  that  it  was  for  evermore ! 

How  often,  in  this  world,  do  people  lightly  say 
good-night,  walk  down  a  street  a  block,  and  turn 
the  corner,  expecting  to  return  in  an  hour,  next 
day,  or  the  next  week,  "when  that  absence  is 
doomed  to  be  for  long  and  dreary  years,  or  for 
an  endless  eternity.  Some  sudden  accident  or 
recounter  consigns  them  instantly  either  to  prison 
or  the  tomb,  or  causes  a  flight  little  better  or 
more  comforting  to  contemplate  than  death  or  a 
felon's  cell. 

Look  how  admirably  Cloud's  dark  secret  was 
guarded ;  so  Avell,  that  could  he  have  known  the 
result  of  the  inquiry  sent  to  the  prison,  its  dan- 
gers would  have  been  totally  destroyed  and  the 
haunting  shadows  of  its  ghostly  spectre  forever 
dispelled. 

Still,  how  appalling  to  contemplate  the  dis- 
pensations of  that  wondrous  Hand,  that  orders 
and  directs  the  little,  apparently  irrelevant  and 
insignificant  points  that  overturn  and  destroy  all 
the  skillfully  planned  and  carefully  constructed 
strength  of  whatever  they  may  be  so  small  a  part, 
or  to  which  they  may  be,  even  howsoever  re- 
motely related.  It  seems  to  be  a  moral  impos- 
sibiUty  to  escape  their  consequences. 

Such  things  are  of  a  nature  to  render  the 
ground  taken  by  the  superstitious  tenable,  if  not 
sufficient  to  confirm  their  faith  in  the  doctrine, 
that,  intimately  connected  with  them  is  an  invis- 
able,  supernatural  hand.  Certain  it  is, that  there 
exists  some  fate,  against  the  influence  of  Avhich 
the  arts  of  man  to  design  and  his  powers  to  exe- 
cute counteracting  forces,  are  ever  unavailing. 
That  grand  coward — conscience — -flies  from  imagin- 
ary dangers. 

The  reported  suicide  of  Cloud  created  a  pro- 
found sensation  in  the  community  where  was  his 
adopted  home.  As  is  always  the  case  under 
similar  circumstances,  the  latent  propensities  of 
people  with  whom  he  had  been  maintaining  active 
business  relations,  were  promptly  manifested. 

Let  a  business  man  very  suddenly  and  unex- 
pectedly pass  under  a  seriously  damaging  cloud, 


SO^IE  OTHER  HEART-ACHES. 


179 


or  into  the  grave,  and  at  once  many  of  those 
Avith  whom  he  has  been  dealing  for  years  with 
liarmonious  smoothness,  discover  flaws  in  his 
transactions. 

Train  loads  of  grain  are  in  transit  on  Cloud's 
account.  Connected  with  these  transactions  are 
drafts,  checks  and  sundry  "other  considerations 
unaccomplished,  to  the  amount  of  many  thou- 
sands of  dollars ;  and  agents  are  actively  engaged 
at  many  points  receiving  and  loading  more.  At 
home,  there  is  a  large  stock  of  assorted  goods, 
and  some  purchase  bills  unpaid. 

Drafts  and  checks  are  protested;  accounts  and 
shipments  are  attached,  and  lawsuits  instituted 
V)etween  merchants,  and  by  banks  against  the 
merchants. 

The  grain  accounts  of  numerous  farmers  in  the 
vicinity  of  his  store,  for  whom  he  made  ship- 
ments on  their  own  credit,  to  pay  which  as  a  last 
act  he  sent  currency,  are  bought  up  at  twenty- 
five  cents  on  the  dollar. 

All  summed  up,  there  are  wide-spread  con- 
fusion, disaster,  sorrow  and  suffering,  to  which 
must  be  added  many  no  better  than  criminal  acts, 
connected  with  this  sad  affair.  These  sprang  as 
direct  and  legitimate  fruits  from  one  and  the  same 
seed, — a  seed  of  unwise  indiscretion,  deliberately 
and  willfully  planted  by  Garland  Cloud  himself, 
in  culpable  disobedience  to  the  dictates  of  his 
own  better  jiadgment,  against  which  his  con- 
science arose  in  stubborn  rebellion. 

From  the  bitter  fruits  of  this  seed  he  had  almost 
incessantly  eaten  ever  after.  That  ill-breeding 
germ  matured  in  the  affair  of  his  hapless  im- 
prisonment at  Bay  City,  was  planted  in  his  re- 
solve to  bury  the  sad  story  of  that  painful  experi- 
ence in  the  silence  of  obHvion;  was  matured  to 
deadly  perfection,  by  his  persistent  effort  to  ful- 
fill the  condition  of  that  fatal  resolution.  He  not 
only  suffered  the  penalty  himself,  but  entailed, 
directly  or  indirectly,  on  untold  numbers  of  other 
human  beii 

COWARDICE. 


CHAPTEE   XLYIII. 

SOME     OTHER     HEART-ACHES. 

"  Love,  by  liarsh  evidence, 

Thrown  from  its  eminence, 
Even  God's  providence 

Seeming  estranged. 

*  *  *  * 

Owning  her  weakness, 

Her  evil  behavior. 
And  leaving  with  meekness, 

Her  sins  to  her  Saviour." 

—The  Bbidge  of  Sighs. 

Beatrice  Atkinson :  "Well,  sister  Cagsandra, 
and  how  are  you  progressing  with  your  free-love 
affair?  And  what  of  your  lover?  What  does 
he  look  like,  and  how  do  you  fancy  him  ?" 

Cassandra  Worthington:  "I  most  miracu- 
lously escaped  the  affair,  by  the  identical  man,  the 
very  next  day  after  I  met  him  at  Madam  Vais- 
entre's,  coming  to  dinner  with  the  Colonel.  This 
man  was  a  Southerner,  and  the  Colonel  was  per- 
haps the  only  man  in  the  city  who  Avould  have 
invited  him  to  dinner :  he  is  so  nearly  an  utter 
stranger  here. 

"What  a  strange  fatality  that  he  should  be  one 
among  the  Colonel's  most  esteemed  friends ;  and 
that  he  should  come  here,  of  all  times,  on  that 
particular  day,  to  dinner!  I  tell  you,  girls,  I  felt 
as  though  I  was  sinking  through  the  floor  when  I 
recognized  him;  but  he  came  very  promptly  to  my 
relief  in  a  way  to  prevent  a  scene.  That  affair  so 
thoroughly  frightened  me,  that  I  abandoned  all 
idea  of  having  a  lover,  and  resolved  to  be  hence- 
forth a  resigned,  true,  and  faithful  wife." 

Rosalind  Stringfellow  :  "  Oh,  Cassa,  that  was 
Heaven's  own  blessing ! 

"If  any  two  women  were   ever  in   a  living, 
earthly  torment,  Beatrice  and  I  are  the  ones.     I 
do  not  see  how  we  are  to  endure  it  much  longer. « 
How  I  envy  you!    Your  lot  is  perfect  bliss,  com- 
pared to  ours. 

"The  men  are  unkind;  we  despise  them,  and 
would  escape  and  turn  back  from  our  wicked 
career  if  we  could.  They  know  who  we  are  and 
where  we  live.  They  are  what  might  be  termed 
elegant  sports.  They  defy  us  to  abandon  them, 
and  coolly  tell  us  that  the  penalty  will  be  full 


180 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


exposure.  We  therefore  fear  tlioin  as  we  would 
Satan,  with  his  chains  and  firebrand  in  hand. 

"  But  alas,  was  this  all  and  the  worst  of  our 
ills,  our  lives  would  be  a  paradise  to  what  they 
are  now,  Avith  the  dread  reahties  of  their  tortiu'c 
day  after  day  l^earing  down  with  ever  augment- 
ing affliction. 

"Some  sharks  possess  our  secret,  and  day  by 
day  they  bleed  us  afresh  for  hush-money.  The 
amounts  of  their  demands  have  grown  to  such 
frightful  magnitude  that  it  would  soon  break  a 
bank  to  meet  them.  We  can  no  longer  obtain 
the  money  from  our  husbands.  We  have  just 
pawned  our  diamonds,  in  order  to  raise  the  funds 
necessary  to  keep  them  silent  for  a  time;  but  it  is 
only  deferring  the  evil  hour,  which  must  como  at 
last  with  redoubled  severity. 

"I  tell  yon,  Cassa,  there  is  neither  help  nor  hope 
for  us  poor  miserable  wretches,  except  in  flight 
or  suicide.  In  flight,  there-  cannot  be  niucli,  if 
any,  hope;  and  we  already  have  enough  to  answer 
for  in  the  hereafter,  without  deeper  dyeing  our 
stained  souls  Avith  the  unpardonable  sin  of  self- 
destruction. 

"Then  again,  on  the  other  hand,  exposure,  and 
being  denounced  and  driven  from  home  and 
protection,  by  righteously  indignant  husbands,  is 
frightful  to  contemplate,  and  would  be  truly  intol- 
erable. What  can  we  do?  Oh,  Cassa!  we  are  mad!" 

Beatrice-  "Yes,  Cassa,  Rosa  has  told  you  of 
our  lamentable,  pitiable  and  utterly  helpless  con- 
dition. 

"  Thank  God  that  3^ou  are  still  safe  and  pure, 
and  thus  both  capable  and  worthy  to  give  some 
wholesome  and  much  needed  advice  to  your  un- 
happy, unworthy,  and  sinful  sisters.  Oh,  Cassa! 
help  us,  because  you '  are  the  only  one  in  this 
world  to  whom  we  can  confide  the  dark  secrets 
of  our  dreadful  trials  ;  and  at  the  same  time  pray 
strive  to  forgive  us. 

"You  know  our  mutual  trials,  when  Ave  three 
together  drained  tlie  cup  of  woe  to  its  last  bitter 
dregs — that  cruel  cup  that  poisoned  the  pure 
and  healthful  current  of  our  young  lives,  and 
crushed  out  from  our  hearts  every  vestige  of 
earthly  hope.  Oh,  Cassa!  remember  those  bitter 
trials  over  which  we  have  together  wept  so  many 
times,  while  we  were  yet  as  pure  and  as  innocent 


as  the  angels  in  heaven — and  we  might  have  so 
remained,  as  Eva  has,  had  Ave,  like  her,  been  per- 
mitted— and  do  not,  I  implore  you,  do  not  judge 
us  too  harshly  !" 

Cassandra:  "Oh,  my  poor  si.sters,  hoAv  I  pit}'' 
you!  I  can  judge  you  only  as  I  must  judge  my- 
self. That  I  am  not  as  you  are  uoaa',  is  owing  to 
no  prudence  nor  goodness  of  my  own.  I  can  for- 
give you,  as  I  hope  to  be  forgiven,  and  as  I  know 
God  Avill  forgive  you  if  you  Avill  at  once  turn  and 
flee  from  the  near  and  certain  destruction  that 
so  nearly  enthrals  you  as  to  preclude  almost  the 
possibility  of  escape;  yet  still  there  remains  to 
you  barely  time  to  be  saved. 

"  My  poor  miserable  sisters,  you  have  noAV 
nothing  left  you  in  tins  Avorld,  Avhere  j-ou  liaA'e 
never  knoAvn  true  happiness.  Your  only  hope 
is  beyond  the  sun,  in  the  great  Eternal.  Turn, 
I  implore  you,  turn  before  it  be  too  late,  and 
flee  to  that  one  source  of  consolation  and  safety 
that  remains  your  only  solace  and  shelter.  Nov.- 
is  the  time — this  day.  Delay  but  for  to-morrow, 
and  you  are  lost,  and  hopelessly. 

"NeA'er  pay  another  penny;  ncA'er  see  those 
accursed  lovers  again ;  and  never  let  your  hus- 
bands see  you  more. 

"  Take  the  money  you  have,  and  fl}',  fly;  not  as 
though  it  Avas  for  life  alone,  but  for  still  far  more 
■ — your  souls. 

"  Seek  the  deep  seclusion  of  a  convent.  Con- 
fide to  the  Mother  Superior  the  nature  of  your 
relentless  pursuers,  from  whom  you  seek  jsrotec- 
tion ;  confess  your  sins,  and  she  will  take  you  in 
and  afford  you  comfort.  There  you  can  repent, 
and  learn  to  minister  unto  suffering  humanity,  and 
thus  perform  a  most  beautiful  mission  of  mercy. 

"  This  is  open  to,  and  invites  you  as  a  last 
refuge  the  only  flight  in  Avhich  you  can  even  hope 
for  present  safety  and  ultimate  reitose.  This  is 
indeed  gloomy  and  cheerless;  but  what  is  any- 
thing else  which  you  could  attempt  ?  You  have 
already  abandoned  your  husbands,  and  are  flee- 
ing from  the  dread  consequences  of  that  act  as 
much  for  their  honor  as  for  your  OAvn  safety. 

"Your  mysterious  disappearance  Avill  create  a 
sensation,  and  overwhelm  your  husbands  Avith 
grief  and  anxiety.  But  to  Avhat  does  all  that 
amount,  compared  with  the  disgraceful  humilia- 


SOME  OTHER  HEART-ACHES. 


181 


tion  of  exposure,  and  all  its  direful  and  incon- 
ceivable consequences,  among  which  the  grave 
,  probabilities  of  suicide  are  too  terrible  for  con- 
templation. You  cannot  afford  to  delay  and  to 
hesitate  in  deciding  which  course  you  will  take : 
the  one  gently  leading  to  tolerable  security,  or 
the  one  rushing  on  with  wild  and  furious  impet- 
uosity to  swift  and  surely  inevitable  destruction." 

Beatrice:  "Oh,  Cassal-  my  blessed,  thrice 
blessed  sister,  ministress  of  mercy,  grace  and 
hope,  angelic  dehverer  of  my  body  and  of  my 
soul  from  present  torment  and  from  an  unending 
hell ! — put  your  arm  around  my  degraded  neck, 
kiss  once  more  my  shame-polluted  cheek,  and 
bless  me,  for  I  am  saved.  Your  counsels  have 
triumphantly  prevailed.  I  am  resolved  on  imm'e- 
diate  flight  to  the  Elysian  repose  of  that  tranquil 
refuge  to  which  you  have  directed  my  wayward, 
stumbling  footsteps  from  this  crime-benighted 
pathway.  There,  no  matter  how  gloomy  be  its 
sombre-shadowed  walls,  nor  how  bitterly  morti- 
fying to  the  flesh  its  restraining  discipline,  I  shall 
find  a  kindly  benignant,  earthly  refuge. 

Rosalind  :  "  And  I  also,  Cassa,  my  sister,  to  us 
Heaven's  ordained  medium,  to  pronounce  to  our 
despairing  hope-exiled  souls  the  dulcet  words  elec- 
trified by  the  ever  glorious  and  revivifying  current 
of  consolation,  that  as  they  soothingly  permeate 
down,  deep  down  into  the  empty,  hollow,  hun- 
gry caverns  of  our  wretched  hearts  echo  and  re- 
echo again  and  again  in  stirring,  comforting  tones, 
the  thrilling  reverberation  of  Peace  !  Peace!  Oh, 
thou  only  hope-inspiring  word.  Peace,  blessed 
Peace,  to  thee  I  flee !  Oh,  my  sister,  let  me  press 
you  to  my  heaving  bosom  once  more,  and  kiss  your 
cheek  while  you  bless  me!" 

Cassandra:  "Not  my  Hps  on  your  cheeks  nor 
brows,  nor  yours  on  mine,  my  sisters,  poor  peni- 
tent children  of  our  angelic  father ;  but  it  shall 
be  LIPS  TO  LIPS  and  hearts  to  hearts  ! 

"MayG-od  bless  and  comfort  you  with  His 
loving  grace  and  holy  spirit,  my  miserable  sisters; 
and  may  He  grant  you  for  guardian  angels,  to 
watch  over  and  to  shield  you  from  every  danger 
and  from  all  harm,  the  tenderly  loving  spirits  of 
our  error-unsullied  father  and  saintly  martyred 
Effie — should  her  spirit  fly  its  sacred  prison  while 
you  remain  in  yours. 


"  For  myself,  my  earth-banished  sisters,  while 
I  live  and  am  able  to  move,  I  will  visit  you  once 
every  week,  and  minister  unto  you  in  every  way 
within  my  power." 

'•  I  alone  of  all  the  world  must  be  the  custo- 
dian of  your  secret,  and  know  the  place  of  your 
living  tomb.  This,  I  hope,  will  afibrd  you  some 
consolation. 

"  As  we  suffered  together  in  our  tender  but 
hope-wasting  years,  and  were  each  to  the  other, 
by  turns,  our  only  comfort  and  consolation,  let  us 
now  still  remain  constant,  true  and  faithful  to  one 
another  throughout  the  remainder  of  our  weary, 
dreary,  cheerless  journey  of  life. 

"As  my  countenance,  visits,  fidelity,  undying 
love  and  endless  devotion  to  you  may  cheer,  com- 
fort and  strengthen  you  in  your  new  lives ;  so  may 
your  patience,  your  resignation,  your  faith,  your 
hope,  teach,  help,  guide  and  enlighten  me  to  under- 
stand, to  appreciate,  to  fulfill  my  duty  toward 
you,  the  world,  myself,  and  my  God. 

"Now,  my  heart-broken  and  sin-stricken  sis- 
ters, here  with  you,  in  unworthiness  as  deeply 
dyed  as  you,  I  most  solemnly  vow,  from  this  day 
henceforth,  to  devote  my  life  and  to  exert  my 
energies  in  the  cause  of  weak  and  sufi'ering  hu- 
manity here  in  this  great  and  wicked  city,  and 
see  if  I  cannot  accomplish  some  good;  to  atone, 
in  some  degree,  for  the  wayward  and  frivolous 
follies  of  the  past;  and,  in  due  time,  perhaps, 
connect  my  labors  directly  with  yours. 

"  I  shall  be  devoted,  faithful,  and  loving  to  my 
husband.  This  change  in  my  life,  and  the  cause 
in  which  I  shall  engage,  will  meet  his  warmest 
approbation,  receive  his  most  zealous  support, 
and  render  him  supremely  happy — something, 
undutiful  woman  that  I  have  been,  I  have  never 
yet  once  studied  nor  striven  to  accomplish. 

"  There,  now,  my  weeping  sisters,  your  tears 
and  mine  have  together  mingled,  as  we  have  on, 
the  necks  of  one  another  wept.  These  blessed 
tears  are  washing  away  your  dark  impurities  and 
mine.  This  is  a  scene  to  make  angels  rejoice 
— not  alone  one,  but  three  sinners  togethtr 
repenting. 

"  Life  with  us  has  been  one  grand  failure.  Let 
us  therefore  make  death  one  grand  and  glorious 
success.     As  redeemed  Magdalens,  then,  we  can 


182 


MYSTIC   ROMANCES   OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


in  purity  soar  away  to  a  blessed  welcome,  where 
father  will  be  waiting  for  us  to  come — 

" '  To  He  within  the  light  of  <iod,  as  I  lie  upon  your 


Where  the  wicked   cease   front    troubling,  and   the 
weary  are  at  rest.'" 

Grand,  noble  shades  of  a  departed  father !  see 
them  triumphing  over  the  vile  weeds  of  dark 
luxuriance,  from  the  evil  seeds  sown  by  a  wicked 
mother  in  then-  young  and  tender  hearts,  the  nat- 
ural abodes  of  purity  and  of  love. 

But  for  the  want  and  absence  of  good  seed 
there  to  germinate  and  be  nurtured,  the  evil 
ones  quickly  sprang  up  in  that  genially  salubrious 
soil,  and  flourished  in  undisputed  mastery  until  the 
multiplicities  of  their  production  were  struggling 
to  force  out  some  germs  from  their  overburdened 
and  encumbered  soil  to  seek  a  lodgment  in  other 
tender,  pure  and  innocent  hearts.  Yet  suddenly, 
as  if  by  some  magical  breath,  the  one  long,  lowly 
smoldering  and  apparently  but  utterly  extinct 
spark  of  a  father's  purity  is  fanned  into  a  raging 
flame,  that  instantly  scorches  and  consumes  them, 
root  and  branch,  expelling  their  .venomous  dross, 
cleansing  and  purifying  the  poor,  polluted,  aching 
hearts. 

Beauty  of  beauties,  the  wondrously  sublime 
picture  of  a  crime-burdened  and  despau'-eugulfed 
human  wretch  firmly  and  apparently  irretrievably 
held  in  the  suction  of  the  whirlpool's  fathomless 
quick-sands,  where  every  feeble  effort  toward 
extrication  tends  to  sink  the  victim  only  deeper 
and  more  hopelessly  in  that  dread  social  Serbo- 
nian  bog,  rising  up,  as  if  by  one  grand,  herculean 
effort,  from  the  clinging  mire  to  the  solid  suface 
of  the  eternally  rock-bound  shore;  fleeing  for 
safety  and  for  life  to  the  eulogistic  fountain  of 
tears  to  wash  away  the  dark,  deep  stains  from 
the  impure  heart,  that  purity  may  shine  in  un- 
dimmed  splendor,  and  illuminate  with  transcend- 
ent, empyreal  brilliancy  that  regenei-ate  and  re- 
deemed soul  FOR  EVERMORE ! 


CHAPTER   XLIX. 

THE    WOES   OF    THE   FORSAKEN   HtTSBANDS. 

"  The  mills  of  the  gods  grind  slowly, 
But  they  grind  exceeding  fine." 

The  mansions  of  Ira  Atkinson  and  Adam  String- 
fellow  are  adjacent,  both  having  been  built  at  the 
same  time,  with  the  dividing  wall  forming  a  part 
of  each  building.  They  are  elegant,  and  contain 
to  repletion  all  that  heart  could  wish  to  render 
life  both  comfortable  and  happy,  save  alone  that 
one  often  shadowy  and  delusive  element  that  is 
purely  spiritual — an  attribute  that  is  inseparable 
from,  and  that  will  blend  with  naught  but  purity; 
a  most  beautiful  thought  that  is  always  "softly 
bodied  forth;"  an  adorable  sentiment ;  an  ecsta- 
tic emotion ;  a  high  and  holy  passion — love.  The 
utter  absence  of  this  home-brightening  essential 
in  the  luxuriously  appointed  households  of  Atkin- 
son and  Stringfellow,  and  in  its  stead,  on  the  part 
of  the  Avives,  absolutely  cold-hearted  indifference, 
bordering  even  on  loathing  and  hatred,  render 
them  anything  but  the  abodes  of  happiness. 

The  masters  of  these  homes,  having  already 
steeped  their  hands,  long  years  before,  in  the  in- 
delible, deep,  double  dye  of  most  atrocious  crime, 
are,  as  a  natural  consequence,  suspicious  of  and 
mistrust  everybody  with  whom  they  come  in  con- 
tact, no  matter  what  the  nature  of  the  relation 
nor  who  the  parties. 

They  are  each  sufficiently  old  to  be  the  father 
of  his  young  wife.  It  is,  the  world  over,  a  con- 
stitutional weakness  in  old  men  to  be  jealous  of 
young  and  beautiful  wives,  whether  their  grounds 
be  real  or  imaginary;  and  this  veritable  ghost  of 
the  imagination  not  infrequently  drives  the 
woman  whom  it  causes  to  be  unjustly  charged 
with  infidehty  and  unjustly  persecuted,  to  make  a 
foundation  for  it,  true  and  real. 

Unfortunately,  in  these  instances,  the  founda- 
tion for  jealousy  was  not  a  spectral  shadow,  but 
a  sadly  true  reality. 

The  two  men  are  at  all  times  prepared  to  re- 
ceive from  their  wives  nearly  any  style  of  an- 
nouncement; so,  therefore,  when  they  retuni 
home  on  the  evening  of  the  day  on  which  wo 


THE  WOES  OF  THE   FORSAKEN    HUSBANDS. 


183 


saw  in  the  last  chapter  their  two  wives  Avith 
their  sister  arranging  to  abandon  their  husbands 
and  their  princely  homes,  and  seek  an  asylum 
within  the  cheerless  precincts  of  a  convent,  the 
husbands  are  but  little  astonished,  and  but  slightly 
mortified  to  find,  from  under  the  hands  of  their 
faithless  wives,  notes,  each  of  which  alike  ran  as 
follows : 

"  Park,  New  York,  May,  1867. 

"My  Husband: 

"  That  1  have  never  loved,  can  never 
love  you,  you  are  consciously  sensible.  On  this 
point  I  have  never  deceived  you.  I  have  never 
acknowledged  nor  professed  to  love  you. 

"  You  know  the  sad  history  and  true  nature  of 
our  formal  courtship,  and  little  better  than  mock 
marriage,  entailing  on  me,  as  far  as  my  heart  was 
concerned,  the  odious  bondage  of  a  legalized  and 
a  church-sanctioned  prostitution,  which  to  me  is 
too  fraught  with  pain  to  be  needlessly  recounted. 

"I  know  that  my  presence  and  the  thoughts 
which  it  ever  is  conjuring  up  in  your  mind,  tend 
but  to  augment  your  unhappiness,  and  perpet- 
ually to  render  my  existence  more  intolerable. 

"  For  all  these  reasons  combined,  I  have  this 
day  resolved  to  leave  your  roof,  to  part  with  you, 
and  to  turn  my  back  on  the  hollow  mockeries 
and  the  cruel  delusions  of  the  social  world  for- 
ever; and  shall  therefore,  without  further  explan- 
ation, say  '  Farewell.' 

"Beatrice." 


Atkinson:  "Well,  Adam,  the  end  has  come  at 
last." 

,  Stringfellow :  "Yes,  Ira;  it  indeed  seems  to 
me  that  our  cups  of  woe  should  now  be  full  to 
overflowing. 

"  Surely  this  will  satisfy  G-ertrude  Flowers' 
relentless  Avenger.  Oh,  what  a  surfeit  of  bitter 
fruit  that  curse-breeding  crime  has  forced  us  to 
eat !  It  seems  that  the  restitution  did  not  suffice 
as  an  ample  atonement,  but  that  the  miseries  of 
our  doom  are  endless.  Perhaps  it  is  better  that 
the  women,  unfaithful  creatures,  are  gone.  But, 
poor  wretches,  T  wonder  what  Avill  become  of 
them." 

A :  "Why,  they  will  go  somewhere  with 

their  lovers.     They  have  absorbed  nearly  half  of 


our  fortune  in  the  past  few  months.  It  was  truly 
friglitful;  and  had  we  not  shut  down  on  it  a 
month  ago,  it  would  never  have  stopped  until 
we  were  beggans. 

"  It  now  appears  that  they  have  been  all  the 
while  preparing  for  this  step,  and  deliberately  and 
systematically  working  to  get  possession  of  our 
last  dollar  before  they  left  us. 

"I  am  unable  to  understand  where  the  money 
went.  Our  households  have  been  economically 
administered,  and  I  do  not  believe  either  one  of 
our  wives  has  bought  an  article  for  her  wardrobe 
during  the  past  three  months.  Blockhead  dotards 
that  we  were  not  to  divine  all  this,  instead,  like 
simpletons,  mistaking  their  well  dissembled  gra- 
ciousness  for  loving  devotion,  and  hoping  to  buy 
off  their  last  vestige  of  antipathy,  our  money 
flowed  like  water." 

Some  five  days  after  the  disappearance  of  their 
wives,  these  two  men  begin  to  receive  at  their 
business  office  from  leading  retail  houses,  bills 
for  enormous  amounts,  all  sold  on  the  written 
orders  of  the  wives,  which  accompany  them  as 
vouchers.  This  establishes  the  validity  of  the 
bills,  and  clearly  fixes  upon  the  husbands  the 
liability  for  their  payment. 

All  the  new  accounts  had  been  opened  after 
the  husbands  had  been  compelled  to  curtail  the 
supply  of  money,  for  which  the  ever  increas- 
ing demands  called.  This  was,  therefore,  with 
the  wives,  one  more  desperate  expedient  to  hold 
at  bay  those  most  voracious  of  all  cormorants, 
ilie  blackmailers,  by  giving  them,  in  lieu  of  money, 
an  extravagantly  increased  amount  in  goods, 
until,  finally  tiring  of  this,  they  demanded  money 
again.  And  so  great  was  the  terror  of  those 
wretched  women,  that,  in  order  to  raise  it,  they 
pawned  their  diamonds. 

Just  now,  with  the  advent  of  these  uncom- 
fertable  bills,  the  woes  of  Atkinson  and  String- 
fellow  commence  with  a  vengeance  that  is  both 
merciless  and  unrelenting.  They  are  prepared  to 
submit  to  the  loss  of  their  faithless  wives  with 
uncomplaining  resignation ;  but  when  it  comes  to 
beholding  the  bulk  of  their  remaining  fortunes 
following  them,  the  crisis  is  at  a  climax.  The 
old  men's  spirits  are  completely  broken;  they 
suddenly  lapse   into  a  morbid  state  of  waning 


184 


MYSTIC  KOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


apath}^  as  to  their  ordinary  affairs  of  life.  Bur- 
dened with  self-reproach  and  the  weight  of 
years,  and  afflicted  with  the  corroding  cares  of 
disappointment,  they  become  the  melancholy 
victims  of  the  often  slow,  but  relentlessly  sure 
remorse  of  conscience. 


CHAPTER  L. 

JOSEPHA    DEL-CAMPANO. 

"  In  that  tale  I  find, 
The  furrows  of  long  thought  and  dried  up  tears, 
Which  ebbing,  leave  a  sterile  track  behind. 
O'er  which  all  heavily  the  journeying  years, 
Plod  the  last  sands  of  life, where  not  a  flower  appears." 

—Byron. 

The  young  woman  bearing  the  name  at  the 
head  of  this  chapter  was  a  beauty  belonging  to 
the  middle-class  of  society,  in  1867.  Of  her 
family  antecedents  and  her  own,  suffice  it  to  say 
that  they  are  unexceptionably  good.  Her  educa- 
tion was  above  the  average  for  her  class,  and  her 
manners  were  polished  and  attractive. 

It  was  her  misfortune  to  be  introduced  to 
Arnold  Noel,  after  he  fled  from  the  impending 
consequences  of  ciime  committed  in  his  native 
city,  leaving  liis  father  to  pay  his  bail. 

This  young  scapegrace  at  once  became  desper- 
ately enamored  of  Josepha  Del-Campano,  and 
courted  her  with  apparently  enthusiastic  sincerity. 
She  fully  reciprocated  his  passion. 

The  speedy  result  was  that  three  or  four  of  the 
young  lady's  intimate  friends  one  day  accom- 
panied her  on  a  little  excursion  into  a  neighbor- 
ing State,  where  there  was  a  quiet  wedding. 

The  young  couple  then  returned,  to  reside  at 
the  home  of  the  bride. 

For  some  time  this  young  imp  of  Satan,  Noel, 
was  devoted  and  very  attentive  to  his  fondly- 
trusting  wife,  and  supplied  all  the  money  requi- 
site for  her  comfort;  although  she  was  all  the 
time  deceived  as  to  what  profession  he  followed 
and  how  he  obtained  his  money. 

He  was  connected  with  a  band  of  thieves — the 
only  genial  calling  or  natural  element  for  him. 

At  length  he  began  to  tire  of  the  young  woman. 
He  absented  himself  for  days  together.     Rapidly 


his  true  character  began  to  develop.  He  often 
came  home  bearing  unmistakable  indications  of 
dissipation. 

The  tears  and  the  remonstrances  of  Josepha 
made  no  more  impression  on  him  than  the  wind 
blowing  on  the  bald  head  of  a  granite-capped 
niouiitain. 

One  day  he  invited  her  to  take  a  ride.  He 
stopped  in  front  of  a  house  and  conducted  her 
into  the  parlor.  There  he  introduced  her  to  a 
man  who  he  informed  her  would  now  be  her 
lover,  as  he  was  going  to  leave  her;  and  at  the 
same  time  coolly  stated  to  her  that  he  had  been 
no  more  than  a  lover,  as  their  marriage  was 
simply  but  a  mock  one,  the  pretending  Justice  of 
the  Peace  who  performed  the  sham  ceremony 
being  one  of  his  own  accommodating  associates. 
And  thus  without  further  ceremony  he  left  her. 

She  feigned  satisfaction,  and  thus  was  permit- 
ted to  return  home,  in  order  to  pack  a  trunk, 
Avhich  enabled  her  to  delude  and  escape  from  the 
ruthless  villain  to  whose  fiendish  care  she  had  been 
consigtied. 

Deceived,  disgraced,  forever  bhghted,  she  grew 
hopelessly  despondent  for  a  time,  and  then  rallied 
to  a  temper  of  rash  desperation. 

She  arraigned  Man  under  the  charge  of  being 
the  deliberate  and  willful  perpetrator  of  her  ruin, 
and  she  swore  a  desperate  revenge  on  mankind. 

She  well  knew  the  power  of  the  spell  that  her 
fatal  beauty  might  wield  over  the  pliable  hearts 
of  men.  And  she  madly,  furiously,  recklessly 
entered  upon  a  career  of  horrible  crime. 

Thus  are  many  of  the  most  wicked  and  dan- 
gerous women  goaded  to  desperation,  deceived, 
lured,  driven  from  paths  of  purity  and  the  throne 
of  honor,  by  the  base  treachery  of  mankind. 
Again,  after  they  have  made  one  misstep,  the 
hard  decrees  of  that  society  which  yet  bestows 
its  greeting  smiles  upon  their  destroyers,  preclude 
their  return — they  are  outcast  waifs  forever. 


THREE  IN  LIEU   OF   FOUR 


185 


CHAPTER  LI. 

THREE    IN    LIEU    OF    FOUR. 

"  And  this  Is  life :  men  come  and  go 
And  heed  me  not, 
Forgetting  all,  I  quiet  rest, 
By  all  forgot." 

— M.  A.  BILLINGS. 

The  failure  of  Garland  Cloud  to  fulfill  his  part 
of  the  compact  does  not  retard  the  New  York 
enterprise  with  which  his  name  was  to  have  been 
most  prominently  associated.  No  delay  is  occa- 
sioned on  account  of  his  terribly  caused  absence 
from  the  post  of  duty  which  he  had  pledged  him- 
self to  assume.  There  are  some  expressions  of 
disappointment  and  regret;  his  name  and  signa- 
ture are  stricken  from  the  articles  of  copartner- 
ship ;  the  firm  is  promptly  organized  under  the 
style  of  Oglethrop,  Harman  &  Co.,  and  com- 
mences business  at  the  time  originally  specified, 
as  though  G-arland  Cloud  had  never  been  expect- 
ed to  be  a  member.  Out  of  pure  charity  his  name 
is  not  only  expunged  from  all  association  which 
it  bore  with  the  firm,  but  it  is  not  referred  to  in 
conversation.  Thus  it  is  that  the  man  who  would 
have  been  the  moving  spirit  in  the  enterprise  is 
rapidly  forgotten. 

Such  is  human  nature,  and  a  wisely  ordered 
essential  in  its  composition,  that  for  the  bereave- 
ment and  the  affliction  entailed  by  death  there  is 
a  mysteriously  soothing  antidote — Time;  which, 
as  a  general  rule,  heals  the  wounds  inflicted  in  the 
hearts  of  sorrowing  friends,  and  even  neSr  and 
dear  relatives,  more  speedily  and  effectually  than 
any  remedy  relieves  those  sorrows  caused  by 
some  quite  comparatively  trivial  and  temporal 
misfortune. 

Wounds  inflicted  by  death  usually  heal.  But  it 
is  the  broken  heart  severed  by  the  dart  of  disap- 
pointed, baffled,  or  hopeless  love  that  is  incurable, 
for  Avhich  sometimes  there  is  no  remedy.  Such 
is  a  malady  that  the  great  healer,  Time,  often  fails 
to  cure  or  abate. 

It  is  not,  therefore,  in  the  harmony  of  things 
for  the  death  of  G-arland  Cloud — no  matter  how- 
ever horrible  its  nature  is  esteemed  by  his  friends, 


— to  interfere  materially  with  their  life-plans,  nor 
long  to  retard  their  prosecution. 

This  seems  to  be  a  wisely  ordered  dispensation 
of  Providence — that  when  any  important  person 
in  any  sphere  of  public  life  or  duty  is  suddenly 
cut  off  by  the  releniless  hand  of  the  Destroying 
Angel,  however  indispensable  his  services  may 
seem,  there  is  always  some  one  ready  to  supply 
his  place ;  so  that  usually  there  is  Uttle  or  no  detri- 
ment suffered  by  the  interest  involved  under  the 
care  and  direction  of  the  dead,  before  he  was 
swiftly  deprived  of  life. 

Such  doctrine,  however,  fails  to  hold  good  in 
the  case  of  more  tender  and  endearing  ties  of  life, 
where  the  loss  of  its  fondest  and  most  cherished 
object  breaks  the  doting  heart  and  leaves  it  to 
pine  in  silent  and  ceaseless  sorrow,  with  no  at- 
tainable relief  but  death,  with  its  blissful  quietude 
and  endless  repose. 

To  Garland  Cloud,  in  the  main  at  least,  was  due 
the  foundation  of  the  New  York  enterprise.  But 
when  he  failed  to  appear  to  fill  his  place  as  the 
building  architect,  there  were  others  to  take  the 
position  he  would  have  occupied ;  and  the  struct- 
ure rose  in  stately  magnificence,  and  perhaps  as 
surely  and  rapidly  as  though  he  had  remained  as 
its  creative  and  directing  genius. 

The  combined  capital  of  the  firm  is  such  as  to 
give  it  an  immediate  and  a  high  rating;  and  noth- 
ing in  human  shape  may  be  more  nearly  perfect 
than  the  beautiful  and  unblemished  character  of  its 
young,  sober,  energetic,  intelligent  and  promising 
members.  Every  one  at  all  familiar  with  it,  pre- 
dicts for  this  firm  an  enviably  prosperous  career. 
Perhaps  it  is  fortunate  that  the  shadow  of  Gar- 
land Cloud's  blighting  curse  is  destined  never  to 
cross  the  threshold  of  the  door  leading  to  the 
prospective  counting-room  of  his  admiring  and 
confiding  friends. 

Had  he  remained,  they  might  have  become  in- 
nocent victims,  and  been  thus  forced  to  partake 
with  him,  at  least  to  a  certain  extent,  of  the  bit- 
ter fruits  of  the  indiscretions  of  his  misguided 
and  erroneous  mistakes  and  misdeeds, 


186 


IVIYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


CHAPTER  LII. 

THE    WOUNDED    AND    FORLORN    DOVE. 

"  She  is  far  from  the  land  where  her  young  hero  sleeps! 
And  lovers  are  round  her  sighing ; 
But  coldly  she  turns  Irom  their  gaze  and  weeps, 
For  her  heart  in  his  grave  is  lying." 

— MOOEE. 

Carrie  Harman  is  inconsolable.  So  long  styled 
the  angel  of  consolation  herself;  yet  still  for  her 
there  is  no  such  being. 

Little  dreamed  G-arland  Cloud  of  the  cruel  stab 
he  would  inflict  in  a  true,  devoted,  loving  heart 
whose  pulsations  vibrated  for  him  alone,  and 
thrilled  at  the  sound  of  his  name.  He  believed 
that  she  disliked  him  as  cordially  as  he  devotedly 
loved  her.  For  this  reason  he  deemed  that  his 
mad  act  would  cause  her  no  pang,  otherwise  than 
one  of  regret  that  she  had  ever  known  him. 

How  often,  alas,  misunderstanding  or  miscon- 
struing each  other  severs  the  ties  of  love  !  This 
celestial  passion  is  prone  to  be  over-jealous, 
strongly  inclined  to  skepticism  whenever  a  guard- 
ed reserve  essaya  to  conceal  the  true  emotions  of 
the  heart,  to  stifle  the  fondest  sentiments  and 
most  ardent  longings  of  the  soul — that  of  declar- 
ing or  confessing-  an  unspoken  love.  Alas,  that 
it  should  thus  sometimes  be  rendered  voiceless 
for  evermore ! 

How  frequently  men  love  women  almost  to  in- 
sane desperation,  and  construe  the  artful  strategy 
of  the  fair  enchantresses  as  cold  and  repulsive  in- 
diflference,  when  in  reality  their  smothered  fiame 
of  affection  contains  more  pent  up  devotion  than 
ever  convulsed  the  heart  of  an  inconstant  man. 
Deep  motive  sometimes  prompts  this  baffling  dis- 
simulation: to  prove  the  sincerity  of  the  man 
who  overwhelms  the  doubting  girl  with  bewil- 
dering declarations  of  love;  to  rend  the  chain 
that  binds  her  to  less  desirable  entanglements  in 
the  subtle  meshes  of  Cupid's  luring  snare,  or  to 
await  the  pending  issue  of  more  promising  expec- 
tations. Most  often,  in  all  probability,  the  latter 
cause  exercises  the  swaying  influence  by  which 
the  lady  is  actuated.  It  matters  little,  however, 
with  the  man,  which  motive  controls  the  woman : 


he  is  certain  to  conclude  that  she  neither  appreci- 
ates his  passionate  sentiment  nor  cares  for  him. 
Thus  are  many  buds  of  love  blasted  ere  they 
blossom;  some  hearts  broken  and  left  to  j^ine 
with  the  bhght  of  irretrievable  woe. 

To  Carrie  Harman,  Charles  Lorenzi  and  Walter 
Paulona  are  unbearable.  Why  this  is  so  she, 
perhaps,  could  not  explain.  It  is  in  all  proba- 
bihty  an  instinctive  aversion. 

Poor  Carrie !  very  soon  after  receiving  the 
tidings  that  so  cruelly  wounded  her,  she  leaves 
her  father's  roof  and  returns  to  the  scenes  of  her 
childhood's  home,  and  of  her  labors  in  dark  and 
trying  days  of  the  near  past — days  to  others  no 
more  dark  and  trying  than  these  present  are  to 
her.  Amid  the  bright  faces  of  her  former  little 
proteges  of  the  mountain,  beaming  with  Nature's 
true  smiles,  she  finds  the  one  grain  of  comfort 
she  is  conscious  of  experiencing  anywhere,  under 
any  circumstances,  in  any  relation  of  life. 

Numbers  of  young  gentlemen  seek  to  comfort 
her,  but  in  vain.  For  more  than  two  years  she 
continues  to  mourn. 

She  hears  from  Gen.  Cloud  the  story  of  the 
ancient  curse  of  his  family,  and  also  of  his  warn- 
ing to  Garland  on  "  the  field  of  Gettysburg." 

In  Garland's  farewell  letter  to  his  father  he 
wrote :  "I  wish  I  could  bequeath  to  Jesse 
Flowers  all  my  vanished  prospects  and  hopes." 

Evidently  the  "prospects"  were  measurably, 
at  least,  of  a  commercial  nature.  But  the  "hopes  " 
—  ah !  the  hopes — to  what  or  to  whom  did  they 
relate  ?  Beyond  any  question  to  Carrie  Harman. 
To  what  other  being  could  they  relate  ?  What 
other  creature  of  earth,  bearing  the  imprint  of 
angelic  beauty  and  heavenly  grace,  could  cause 
the  fountain  of  hope  to  spring  in  that  arid  sor- 
row-parched breast  ?  To  Garland  Cloud,  Carrie 
Harman  was  all  the  world.  Without  her,  life  was 
disrobed  of  its  every  charm. 

For  these  reasons,  what  could  be  more  natural, 
after  he  was  obliged  to  regard  her  but  as  a  van- 
ished dream,  to  desire  that  she  should  become 
the  life-jewel  of  Jesse  Flowers?  This  young 
man  was  Cloud's  dearest  male  friend.  A  better 
and  truer  young  man  could  rarelj^,  if  ever,  be 
found  beneath  a  saintly  sphere. 


THE  WOUNDED  AND  FORLORN  DOVE. 


187 


Because  G-arland  Cloud  thus  esteemed  and  ad- 
mired him,  and  desired  that  he  should  become 
the  custodian,  the  protector  and  the  comforter  of 
poor,  disconsolate  Carrie,  she,  doubtless,  was 
materially  impressed  with  the  conviction  that 
duty  to  the  memory  of  her  vanished  idol  sternly 
required  her  to  make  that  sacrifice  on  the  shrine 
of  love,  should  it  ever  be  demanded.  Thus  in- 
tiuenced,  she  had  nothing  to  do  but  wait,  as  she 
ministered  to  her  fond  charges  through  many 
mournful  days. 

Perhaps  this  emphatic  declaration  of  Cloud, 
made  on  the  dread  confines  of  the  "Nevermore," 
created  a  deep  impression  on  the  mind  of  Jesse 
Mowers.  Certainly  there  was  nothing  more 
natural  than  for  Carrie  Harman  to  make  a  vul- 
nerable impression  on  his  heart,  especially  since 
there  remained  no  visible  barrier  between  him 
and  her,  to  preclude  him  from  entering  and  pres- 
sing the  suit  of  love. 

We  may  be  permitted  to  imagine  that  Jesse 
contemplated  this  enterprise  with  misgivings. 
Well  did  he  know  the  lofty  esteem  cherished  by 
Carrie  for  him ;  yet  he  could  but  remember  that 
it  was  simply  the  solicitous  regard  of  a  sister, 
and  nothing  more.  Under  these  circumstances, 
we  cannot  deem  it  very  wonderful  that  he  per- 
mitted the  months  to  go  by  and  multiply,  years 
before  he  ventured  to  speak  of  love. 

Besides,  the  memory  of  Garland  Cloud,  as  it 
was  associated  with  Carrie  Harman,  doubtless  in- 
spired Jesse  with  a  certain  sense  of  awe :  the  ter- 
ril^le  end  of  the  absent  adorer  of  the  Angel  of 
Consolation  was  sufficiently  painful  to  deter  this 
modest  young  gentleman  from  hurriedly  seeking 
to  occupy  the  void  in  the  aching  heart  of  the  fair 
and  silent  mourner. 

In  the  fall  of  1869,  Jesse  Flowers  visits  his 
old  mountain  home.  While  in  the  dreamy  dells 
of  his  childhood  years,  he,  modestly  doubting, 
sues  for  Miss  Harman's  hand.  Whatsoever  be 
the  nature  of  the  influence  that  decides  her,  it 
results  in  her  consenting  to  return  with  him  to 
New  York — his  bride. 


CHAPTER    LIII. 

BUSINESS    AND    SOCIAL    FLASHES. 

"  Commerce,  friendship,  love,  all  blend- 
Weal  or  woe— all  social  ties  but  tend. 
To  bow  at  her  slirine,  and  liowsoe'er  bold. 
Yield  to  tUat  winning  goddess— Gold." 

—ANON. 

Business,  society,  love,  and  war  are  inseparably 
connected  with  and  irretrievably  subject  to  the 
influence  and  the  power  of  money.  Hence  it  is 
that  business,  which  is  ever  esteemed  and  designed 
to  be  the  greatest  of  all  money-producing  factors, 
is  one  grand  social  lever  and  creator.  Business 
makes  or  mars  society,  in  this  latter-day  accepta- 
tion of  the  term,  according  to  the  extent  of  its 
prosperity  or  the  magnitude  of  its  reverses. 

The  scale  of  social  rank  is,  as  a  rule,  measured 
and  graded  by  the  amount  of  money  its  members 
can  lavish  on  all  the  appointments  and  equipages 
that  make  up  the  perfect  role  of  brilliant  and 
matchless  display.  As  the  full  tide  of  prosperity 
rolls  up  its  hoards  of  wealth,  so  is  the  social  posi- 
tion of  the  fortunate  advanced ;  while,  as  the  ebb 
tide  takes  them  away,  so  is  the  social  status  of  the 
unfortunate  diminished. 

Let  it  be  but  known  that  a  man  is  prospering 
rapidly,  or  that  he  has  become  a  millionaire, — 
though  the  nature  of  his  business  is  not  such  as 
the  most  scrupulous  approve,  and  though  many  of 
the  transactions  from  which  he  derives  his  -syealth 
are  of  questionable  repute, — still  both  he  and  his 
family  receive  the  smiles  of  society,  and  their 
friendship  is  sought  with  eagerness,  and  assidu- 
ously cultivated. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  he  has  made  heavy 
losses,  is  losing,  is  in  a  faihng  condition,  or  has 
ah-eady  failed,  all  the  world  instinctively  expe- 
riences a  thrill  of  aversion  for  him  ai;d  his. 

The  firm  of  Ogiethrop,  Harman  &  Co.  prospers 
AvonderfuUy.  Business  pours  into  it  from  all  over 
the  South,  in  one  perpetual  and  ever-increasing 
stream. 

Ogiethrop's  wife  is  so  well  known  and  prized 
as  to  be  regarded  a  general  favorite  in  society. 
Rosalia  Harman,  nee  Flowers,  and  Carrie  Flow- 
ers, nee  Harman,  formerly  esteemed  Angels  of  the 


188 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES   OF   THE  BLUE  AND  THE'  GEEY. 


Mountain  and  of  Consolation,  are  both  soon  her 
constant  friends. 

They,  as  a  general  rule,  are  for  some  time  placed 
in  the  rather  ostracized  Southern  element  of  so- 
ciety; and  are,  therefore,  quite  exclusive;  and 
manifest  the  most  serene  indifference. 

Cassandra  Worthington,  who  is  almost  fanatic- 
ally immersed  in  the  cause  and  works  of  philan- 
thropy, is  also,  as  a  matter  of  course,  their  friend. 
Together  these  four  women  become  enlisted  in 
the  same  cause,  and  work  largely  in  direct  con- 
cert with  the  Sisters  of  Charity — Beatrice  and 
Rosalind. 

The  four  ladies  make  a  new  departure  as  to 
themselves  and  their  homes.  They  wear  no  jew- 
elry, no  extravagant  nor  superfluous  apparel,  nor 
do  they  administer  their  households  but  with  the 
most  modestly  simple  yet  still  comfortable  econ- 
omy. This  enables  them  to  contribute  continually 
and  liberally  to  the  wants  of  suffering  humanity, 
that  they  know  personally  to  be  both  worthy  and 
deserving  of  assistance. 

Mrs.  Worthington  previously  set  the  exam- 
ple in  this  direction  by  selling  her  handsome 
diamonds,  with  the  cordial  approbation  of  hci- 
husband,  who  values  and  appreciates  people  not 
by  what  they  wear  in  the  way  of  clothing  or  or- 
naments, and  devotes  their  proceeds  to  the  cause 
in  which  she  has  already  engaged  herself. 

After  this  change  in  the  course  of  his  wife's 
life,  Silas  Worthington  is  a  new  man.  Instead  of 
leaving  the  uncongenial  society  of  his  wife,  as  it 
had  been  in  the  past,  to  attend  a  business  meet- 
ing, or  to  meet  a  friend  on  business  on  an  evening 
after  dinner,  he  remains  at  home,  or  goes  out 
with  her;  and  both  seem  personified  devotion 
and  happiness  combined. 

In  time,  Rosalia  Harman  and  Carrie  Flowers 
became  known  and  appreciated  for  themselves, 
everywhere  in  the  compass  of  that  social  sphere 
where  Cassandra  Worthington  and  Evalina  Ogle- 
throp  inove. 

The  members  of  the  firm  of  Oglethrop,  Har- 
man &  Co.,  and  their  estimable  and  beautiful 
wives,  are  now  basking  in  the  salubrious  and 
congenial  smiles  of  fortune.  With  them  the  cur- 
rent of  life  has  ever  been  more  than  comparatively 
smooth  and  cheerful  for  the  times  in  which  they 


lived.  No  great  and  terrible  personal  misfortunes 
have  ever  fallen  to  the  lot  of  any  one  of  them, 
except  the  heart-aches  experienced  by  Carrie 
Harman  for  Garland  Cloud  and  his  sad  end;  and 
these,  it  seems,  have  yielded  to  the  treatment  of 
that  great  and  mystic  heart-healer — Time.  There 
were  no  convents  in  the  land  where  she  dwelt, 
and  she  went  to  the  mountain,  and  was  healed. 

The  trials  and  the  wrongs  of  the  Flowers 
children  had  passed  the  climax  of  their  bitterness 
during  the  tender  years  of  the  j)Oor  fatherless 
little  ones;  and  the  experience  through  which 
they  passed  after  they  arrived  at  the  years  of 
accountability,  had  tended  to  beautify  their  lives 
and  to  prepare  them  to  shine  in  the  paths  of  use- 
fulness and  honor. 

The  Harmans  had  lost  much  property  by  the 
war,  but,  nevertheless,  do  they  now  appear  to 
advantage. 

Oglethrop,  and  his  jewel  of  a  wife,  have  met 
no  crosses. 

Exempt  from  unmerciful  disaster,  and  far  re- 
moved from  and  shielded  against  the  baneful  in- 
fluence and  too  often  potent  sway  of  temptation, 
these  six  young  people  should  glide  smoothly 
over  life's  ocean  in  peaceful  serenity  and  blissful 
happiness;  and  this  they  will  do,  provided  they 
do  not  draw  the  penalties  of  indiscretion,  nor  the 
retribution  of  crime  upon  themselves. 

Had  Effie  Edelstein  been  a  dowerless  girl,  Law- 
rence Pleasington's  hopes  and  happiness  would 
never  have  been  shattered  on  her  account.  Seek- 
ing to  win  her  as  an  heiress  was  neither  an  indis- 
cretion nor  a  crime ;  but  entailed  a  terrible  mis- 
fortune. 

Had  Garland  Cloud  resisted  the  temptation  to 
conceal  something  that  properly  and  justly  was 
no  disgrace,  he  would  be,  with  his  former  friends, 
useful,  prosperous,  and  esteemed. 

It  is  those  who  bear  the  relentless  scourge  of 
misfortune  courageously,  and  pass  through  the 
fiery  crucible  of  temptation  unscorched,  who  are 
truly  heautiful. 


THE  LONELY  MYSTERIOUS  TRAVELER. 


189 


CHAPTER  LIV. 

THE    LONELY    MYSTERIOUS    TRAVELEU. 

"In  my  youth's  summer.  I  dirt  sing  of  cue. 

The  wandering  outlaw  of  his  own  darli  mind  : — 

Again  I  seize  the  theme  but  then  begun. 
And  bear  it  with  me  as  the  wind 

Bears  the  cloud  onward,"  —Byron. 

In  the  winter  of  1869-70,  there  is  on  a  rail- 
road survey  in  the  Louisiana  lowlands  a  well  dres- 
sed, pecuHarly  mysterious  stranger ;  all  alone,  with 
the  light  field  paraphernalia  of  a  civil  engineer,  he  is 
passing  quietly  along  at  the  rate  of  twenty  miles 
per  day,  on  foot. 

As  to  his  business  and  himself,  he  is  obstinate- 
ly reticent  wherever  he  takes  refreshments  at 
noon  or  lodges  at  night.  At  other  times  of  the 
day  he  rarely  ever  speaks  to  any  one,  although 
he  passes  near  numbers  of  people,  sometimes  right 
among  hundreds  of  cotton-pickers,  and  through 
the  main  streets  of  large  towns. 

Just  now  there  is  considerable  excitement 
about  the  building  of  the  anticipated  road,  which 
has  been  long  deferred ;  hence,  therefore,  many 
are  the  conjectures,  and  rumors  are  rife  as  to  the 
object  of  this  soHtary  individual ;  and  the  tidings 
of  his  coming  travel  before  him. 

The  most  current  conclusion  is  that  he  is  locat- 
ing depots  on  the  sly,  and  spying  out  the  most 
desirable  property,  in  the  interest  either  of  the 
company  or  of  speculators,  who  will  send  secret 
agents  to  buy  it  quietly. 

It  is  evident  from  the  bronzed  appearance  of 
his  face,  that  he  has  long  been  exposed  to  the 
vertical  rays  of  a  Southern  summer's  sun. 

When  within  about  forty  miles  of  the  termi- 
nus of  the  road,  a  Friday's  noon  finds  him  near 
the  beautifully  appearing  mansion  of  an  exten- 
sive cotton  planter,  nesthng  in  a  handsome  grove 
on  a  high,  gravelly  knoll. 

Being  hungry,  and  seeing  no  other  house  ahead 
of  him  nearer  his  line  of  travel  than  this  one, 
he  turns  aside  to  seek  his  dinner  there,  just  as  he 
has  turned  every  day  for  the  past  week  at  other 
points,  to  other  houses  on  his  pathway. 


Arriving  at  the  gate  he  shouts  loudly:  "  Halloo !  " 

Instantly  the  blustering  old  gentleman  makes 
his  appearance  on  the  portico,  and  sings  out, 
"Halloo  yourseli" 

Traveler:  "  Can  a  tired,  hungry  man  get  din- 
ner here,  sir?  " 

Planter:  "Certainly;  walk  right  in,  sir.  Be 
seated  just  a  moment,  while  I  go  and  have  you  a 
plate  prepared,  as  we  are  now  dining.  All  read}^, 
sir,  come  in." 

A  young  lady  of  the  family  has  surrendered 
her  place  at  the  table,  in  order  to  make  room  for 
the  new  comer  promptly.  She  is  a  beautiful, 
blooming,  blushing,  Southern  rose ;  and  her  name 
is  Manonia. 

She  takes  a  sly  peep  at  the  stranger  through 
the  aperture  of  a  door  slightly  ajar,  as  he  sits  at 
the  table.  Then  she  glides  into  the  parlor,  seats 
herself  at  the  piano,  and  plays  the  dreamy  air  of 
a  Southern  sentimental  song,  "  The  Broken  Spell," 
singing  one  verse  and  the  chorus  with  the  thrill- 
ing pathos  of  a  music-nurtured  child  of  sunny 
Italy. 

"  Years  I  may  spend  still  in  pleasure. 
But  memory  will  cling  to  me  yet. 
There  are  feelings  that  words  cannot  m'easure, 
There  are  tones  that  I. cannot  forget. 

Vain  are  the  vows  we  have  plighted  : 

Would  that  we  never  had  met ; 
Love's  a  flower  that  blooms  to  be  blighted, 

And  a  star  that  X'ose  but  to  set." 

The  dulcet  notes  of  her  voice  echo  through 
and  die  away  in  the  large  high  rooms  and  halls, 
faintlybut  sweetly  penetrating  to  the  distant  and 
closed  dining-room. 

She  then  rises  from  the  instrument,  takes  up 
a  peacock's-tail-  feather  duster,  and  dusts  the  fur- 
niture as  she  soliloquizes: 

"The  same  face  of  the  stranger  of  whom  I 
have  so  often  dreamed,  and  awoke  weeping.  Yes, 
the  same,  plain  as  daylight. 

"Well,  from  my  stolen  peep,  I  cannot  see  that 
there  is  any  cause  connected  with  him  to  weep 
over  How  very  ridiculous!  But  that  is  just  like 
dreams.  In  order  to  interpret,  one  must  trans- 
pose them,  and  draw  an  inference  opposed  to  what 
they  appear  to  mean. 


190 


MYSTIC   ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


"But  they  are  coming  from  dinner,  and  I  must 
dust  from  here." 

Planter:  "And  how  do  you  manage  to  make 
a  living,  stranger,  with  but  one  hand?" 

Traveler:  "Oh,  in  various  ways,  sir.  I  can 
do  all  the  head  work  of  building  a  railroad.  I 
am  a  merchant,  and  a  thorough  master  of  every- 
thing connected  with  commerce  in  the  commis- 
sion, or  the  general  wholesale  and  retail  business, 
and  of  the  keeping  of  all  the  books  of  either  line 
named.  Could  subsist  as  a  book-keeper,  was  that 
the  only  show  to  hve." 

Planter:  "Oh,  then  I  can  give  you  a  hand- 
some job.  I  have  started  my  son  in  a  large 
business  at  the  toAvn  five  miles  from  here,  and  I 
am  exceedingly  anxious  to  procure  the  services 
of  a  practical  business  man  and  book-keeper,  to 
stay  with,  and  train  him  for  at  least  a  year. 
What  Avould  you  undertake  the  Avork  for,  by  the 
year?" 

Traveler:  "  About  twelve  thousand  dollars,  I 
I  suppose,  if  I  Avould  undertake  it  at  all,  which 
would  not  do  now." 

Planter:  "I  reckon  you  don't  lose  much 
sleep  about  making  a  living.  Oh,  I  remember 
now.  You  must  be  the  man  I  heard  of  at  town 
last  evening.  Are  you  not  going  over  the  survey 
of  this  railroad  ? ' ' 

Traveler  :  "  Yes,  sir;  but  in  the  most  informal, 
careless  manner." 

Planter:  "Oh,  I  understand  it  all  now.  Can 
you  tell  me  anything  concerning  the  road  or  its 
prospects  ?  " 

Traveler:  "Absolutely  nothing,  sir.  The 
company  now  negotiating  for  it  will  quickly 
liuild  if  they  get  it;  but  there  seems'  to  be  inter- 
minable delays  and  all  kinds  of  obstacles  to  pre- 
vent any  successful  issue  of  the  enterprise." 

Planter:  "How  long  would  it  take  you  to 
teach  a  man  to  keep  books,  and  would  you  teach 
a  class,  provided  such  terms  as  you  might  your- 
self propose  were  complied  with?" 

Trave-ler:  "I  could  give  a  man  a  practical 
start  and  copious  examples  for  his  future  guidance, 
in  a  month.  I  have  never  thought  about  attempt- 
ing to  teach,  and  at  present  I  have  not  the  time.  " 

Planter:  "I  Avill  pay  you  one  hundred  dol- 
lars, board  and  send  you  to  toAvn  and  back  here 


every  day,  if  you  Avill  teach  my  sou;  and  I  am 
sure  you  can  get  a  good,  large  class.  Will  you 
stop  long  enough  to  ascertain?" 

Traveler:  "Impossible.  I  am  on  my  Avay  to 
take  the  contract  to  build  a  long  and  difficult  bridge 
on  the  railroad  beyond  the  river.  I  can  leave 
you  my  address  and  will  take  yours;  you  can 
see  your  friends  and  write  to  me  the  result.  I 
will  then,  if  your  letter  warrants  it,  write  and  tell 
you  if  I  have  time  to  return  and  fulfill  your 
engagement  before  the  work  on  the  bridge  is 
ready  for  me  to  commence  on  it.  Here  is  my 
address  on  this  envelope.  I  must  now  be  off. 
What  is  my  bill?  " 

Planter  :  "  Nube  G-arland.  All  right,  Mr.  Gar- 
land, thanks.  I  shall  write  to  you  very  soon. 
Your  bill  is  to  call  again  should  you  ever  pass  this 
way.  Say  no  more  to  me  about  pay.  I  wish 
you  would  stop  over  a  few  days ;  but  since  you 
will  not,  here  is  my  address  on  this  envelope." 

G-arland  :  "  Eldred  Donne.  Thanks  to  you,  Mr. 
Donne.  I  am  exceedingly  grateful  to  you  for 
your  generously  proffered  and  hospitably  extended 
kindness,  and  much  regret  my  inability  to  com- 
ply with  your  wishes.     Farewell." 

Donne  :  "  FarcAvell,  my  friend.  Much  success 
to  you." 

Just  as  this  man  is  passing  out  of  the  gate,  he 
hears  the  old  gentleman  call  his  name,  and  turning, 
says:  "Yes,  sir;  what  do  you  wish ? " 

Donne  :  "  See  here,  Mr.  Garland,  this  is  Friday 
noon.  You  cannot  reach  your  destination  before 
Sunday  noon,  if  you  should  travel  on  that  day. 
Your  road  is  both  muddy  and  swampy.  Stop 
over  until  Monday.  To-morrow  I  can  find  out 
just  what  can  be  done.  Monday,  bright  and 
early,  I  will  start  you  behind  a  fast  team  -that 
Avill  land  you  at  your  destination  before  night, 
and  that  will  bring  you  back  the  next  day  if  you 
can  return.  AnyAvay,  you  will  only  lose  a  day  and 
at  the  same  time  you  will  escape  a  slavish  walk. 
From  here  on,  there  is  not  very  much  to  be 
seen,  and  you  cannot  follow  the  survey  half  the 
distance,  there  is  so  much  water  in  the  swamps, 
and  even  on  the  bottom-lands,  just  noAv." 

Garland:  "That  appears  a  fair  and  liberal 
proposition ;  but  I  would  do  you  an  injustice  to 


THE  LONELY  MYSTERIOUS  TRAVELEE. 


191 


accept  it,  because  there  is  scarcely  the  shaduAV  of 
a  chance  that  I  will  ever  return." 

Donne ;  "I  will  not  feel  harshly  toward  you 
if  3'ou  do  not,  and  still  make  you  the  offer  with 
the  distinct  understanding  that  you  are  not  to 
return." 

Garland  :  "  All  right  then,  sir,  I  will  remain. 
But  look  at  those  fine  squirrels  in  that  hickory 
tree.     Have  you  a  gun  ?" 

Donne:  "Yes  sir;  but  I  never  shoot,  and 
yoi:  cannot." 

Garland  :  "  Give  me  the  gun  and  I  will  soon 
show  you." 

Donne :  "Well,  I  never  saw  such  shooting: 
four  Avithout  missing;  that  is  a  fine  mess." 

Garland  :  "  Then  I  will  stop." 

The  ultimate  result  is  the  formation  of  a  class, 
and  its  being  taught  by  Nube  Garland. 

During  the  first  two  weeks,  the  old  gentleman, 
who  is  an  incessant  talker,  tells  his  guest  all  his 
own  history,  during  the  evenings  between  supper 
and  the  old  planter's  invariable  nine  o'clock  hour 
for  retiring. 

He  married  at  the  early  age  of  eighteen,  and 
very  soon  thereafter  inherited  and  amassed  a  hand- 
some property  in  one  of  the  old  cotton  States. 

He  indorsed  largely  for  friends.  The  old 
bankrupt  law  went  into  operation,  and  they,  to 
a  man,  took  the  benefit  of  it.  He  would  not 
take  such  benefit;  but  instead,  paid  the  obliga- 
tions to  the  last  dollar,  and  this  reduced  him  to 
chill  and  pincliing  penury. 

He  is  a  powerful,  muscular  man ;  and  he  made 
it  a  point,  after  paying  the  last  dollar — Avhich  he'^ 
did  by  raising  two  crops  on  rented  land,  and  by 
driving  hogs  from  Tennessee — to  whip  every  man 
whose  debts  he  had  paid. 

This  resulted  in  thirty  odd  true  bills  of  indict- 
ment being  found  against  him  at  one  sitting  of 
the  grand  jury. 

Finding  it  too  hot,  on  account  of  this  state  of 
legal  jeopardy,  to  be  comfortable  or  safe,  he  mi- 
grated between  two  suns,  to  the  "cany  regions" 
of  Texas ;  and,  after  there  making  a  few  crops, 
he  then  moved  to  Louisiana  and  settled  in  the 
woods  on  the  spot  where  his  house  now  stands. 

He  had  one  negro  man,  himself,  and  one  boy 
larcfe  enough  to  work  when  he  started  his  ncAV 


home.  With  this  small  force  he  opened  the  laud, 
and  raised  sufficient  surplus  cotton  the  first  year  to 
buy  another  hand. 

From  this  period  his  prosperity  was  rapid  to 
a  degree  that  the  war  found  him  the  owner  of 
hundreds  of  slaves,  an  immense  plantation,  and 
the  most  extensive  store  to  be  met  anywhere  in 
that  section. 

At  the  close  of  the  war  his  slaves  were  gone ; 
but  he  had  several  cotton  crops  on  hand  that 
yielded  a  very  handsome  fortune  in  gold. 

He  had  then  four  living  children,  and  he  made 
each  one  of  them  independent  by  placing  one- 
fourth  of  his  war  cotton  as  a  dowry  to  each  child. 

The  old  gentleman  himself  then  goes  to  work 
on  the  plantation,  leading  a  gang  of  freedmen; 
continuing  the  year  round,  right  along,  one  year 
after  another. 

He  is  a  man  of  boundless  ambition,  and  has, 
withal,  a  passion  that  is  simply  terrible  when  it 
is  once  thoroughly  aroused.  In  his  day  he  has 
been  a  carnate  devil,  and  as  wicked  as  the  arch 
fiend  could  wish  him.  But  he  is  ever,  to  some 
extent,  restrained  by  the  gentle  influence  of  his 
meekly  patient,  angelically  devoted  wife. 

Through  her  influence  he  finally  professed  re- 
ligion and  joined  the  church  sometime  previous 
to  the  war. 

He  is  given  to  fits  of  despondency  whenever 
the  drouth  or  the  cotton-worm  is  cutting  short 
his  crop ;  then  he  leaves  his  religion  at  home, 
goes  to  toAvn  and  drinks  too  much.  On  these 
occasions  he  is  specially  ugly  and  disagreeable. 

He  has  two  sublime  quahtits,  drunk  or  sober : 
the  story  of  distress  and  want  of  the  poor  always 
moves  him  to  compassionate  kindness  and  liberal 
charity;  and  he  is  the  soul  of  honor. 

This  man  lives  for  his  .children.  And  at  this 
period,  two  of  them,  the  eldest,  a  son,  the  young- 
est, a  daughter,  have  caused  him  much  trouble  by 
marrying  contrary  to  his  will ;  the  son  to  his  own 
cousin ;  the  daughter  to  a  young  man  who  was 
raised,  as  the  saying  goes,  "  with  a  silver  spoon 
in  his  mouth,"  but  who  is  left,  at  the  close  of  the 
war,  "as  poor  as  a  church  mouse,"  ignorant  of 
all  kinds  of  business  and  unused  to  work,  having 
never  in  his  precious  life  soiled  his  dainty  hands 
with  any  class  of  labor,  but  kept  them  ever  en- 


192 


IklYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


cased  in  delicate  kids.  In  a  word,  he  needs 
everything  else  in  the  world  except  a  wife.  He 
was  too  young  to  go  to  the  war. 

The  other  two  children  are  single;  the  son, 
who  is  the  merchant,  and  the  daughter,  who  is  at 
home — the  exquisitely  charming  Manonia.  This 
son  is  christened  Eldred,  for  his  father. 

The  third  Sunday  that  the  stranger  has  been 
there,  the  son  comes  home  on  a  visit,  when  the 
following  conversation  occurs : 

DonnE,  Sr. :  "  Well,  son,  and  how  runs  the 
business  ?  " 

Donne,  Jr. :  "  Tamely,  father ;  too  much  credit. 
Everything  is  forever  going  out,  and  notliing  com- 
ing in. 

"  That  man  Garland,  who  is  teaching  me  book- 
keeping, says  that  nothing  short  of  a  mint  of 
money  can  keep  such  a  craft  afloat,  and  that  we 
have  not  got  yet;  still,  he  don't  know  it.  But 
where  is  he  ?  " 

Donne,  Sr. :  "Oh!  out  somewhere.  He  is  a 
deep  mystery  to  me.  He  courts  not,  but  rather 
shuns,  our  society.  Is  as  jDolite  and  respectful  as  a 
dancing-master,  Avhich  shows  that  his  breeding 
has  been  refined.  He  will  talk  to  me  with  fas- 
cinating eloquence  about  war,  business,  and  rail- 
roads ;  but  he  has  no  word  for  women  folks. — 
Does  he  know  it  all  about  books  and  business  ?  " 

Donne,  Jr. :  "He  does;  and  he  is  teaching  me 
far  more  than  he  agreed  to  do.  If  I  only  knew 
all  he  knows,  I  could  succeed. 

"  He  is  not  sociable,  and  never  converses  with 
one  of  us  on  any  subject  outside  of  our  lessons; 
and  in  this  he  is  seriously  earnest,  and  as  solemn 
as  a  preacher. 

"  Manonia,  were  I  here  with  him  every  even- 
ing, as  you  are,  I  would  find  out  his  history,  which 
is,  beyond  question,  a  most  romantic  love  story." 

Manonia:  "Why,  Eldred,  the  man  has  now 
been  here  more  than  two  weeks,  and  in  all  that 
time  he  has  never  yet  once  deigned  so  much  as 
to  speak  to  me.  He  actually  seems  half-fright- 
ened whenever  ma  speaks  to  him  at  the  table. 

"Father  has  twice  asked  him  about  love  expe- 
rience, and  he  rather  impatiently  replied  each 
time,  'Yes;  I  have  been  there;'  and  then  he 
adroitly  changed  the  subject.  How  can  I  Ijreak 
such  Arctic  ice  ? 


'■'He  sits  here  alone,  writing,  or  with  his  head 
resting  on  his  hand,  as  if  deeply  immersed  in 
thought,  until  midnight,  and  even  later.  Father 
goes  early  to  bed,  and  I  go  to  the  dining-room.  I 
am  sure  that  were  I  to  remain,  he  would  instantly 
leave  the  parlor." 

Donne,  Jr. :  "He  would  show  both  your  pres- 
ence and  3'^our  questions  more  respect  than  he 
does  father's.  Virginians  are  famous  for  chivahy 
and  gallantry  toward  the  fair  sex.  He  is  young, 
clearly  manifests  that  he  is  temperate,  and  there- 
fore, no  matter  what  his  sorrows  or  his  disaji- 
pointments  may  have  been  in  the  past,  the  ro- 
mantic is  perhaps  slumbering  in  his  soul,  yet  is 
not  extinct.     But  there  is  his  footstep  in  the  hall. 

Speak  of and  his you  know,  will  appear. 

So  we  will  drop  this  subject." 

Manonia:  "Yes;  I  think  we  had  better  dis- 
cuss it  no  more,  never." 


CHAPTER  LV. 

UNFOLDING    TUE    iMYSTERY. 

"  He,  who,  growu  aged  in  this  world  of  woe, 
In  deeds,  not  years,  piercing  the  depths  of  life. 
So  that  no  wonder  waits  him;  nor  below. 
Can  love  or  sorrow,  fame,  ambition,  strife. 
Cut  to  the  heart  again  with  the  keen  knife." 

— Bybon. 

On  Monday  night  following  the  Sunday  on 
which  the  conversation  that  terminated  at  the 
closing  of  the  last  chapter  ensued,  the  man  Gar- 
land occupies  his  customary  seat  at  a  table  in  the 
centre  of  Eldred  Donne's  grand  parlor,  with  a 
lamp  on  the  table,  his  back  to  the  fire-place,  in 
which  there  flickers  a  low,  smoldering  fire  that 
reflects  scarcely  any  light,  between  the  hours  of 
nine  o'clock  and  midnight,  writing  as  rapidly  as 
the  hand  can  drive  the  pen. 

The  house  is  as  still  as  death,  so  that  the  tick- 
ing of  the  old  eight-day  clock  in  the  dining-room 
sounds  like  the  measured  beat  of  a  forge-hammer 
in  perpetual  motion.  The  night  is  oppressively 
dark,  and  a  cold  sleet-storm  is  moaning  and  howl- ' 
ing  outside. 

The  one  lamp  in  the  middle  of  the  large  old 
parlor  is  so  dim,  and  lights  the  room  so  imper- 


UNFOLDING  THE   MYSTERY. 


193 


fcrtl}-,  that  woird  sliadows  are  reflected  on  all 
sides;  and  the  ancestral  portraits  with  which 
the  walls  are  profusely  adorned,  look  down  upon 
the  strange  man,  or  seem  to  look,  so  like  veri- 
table ghosts,  that  it  makes  him  shudder  to  raise 
his  eyes  to  look  at  them. 

He  is  occupied  writing  examples  and  instruc- 
tions for  his  class,  and  with  the  corroding  canker 
of  his  own  dark  thoughts;  which,  evidently,  are 
much  of  the  time  far  away  from  the  page  of 
manuscript  that  is  steadily  and  rapidly  growing 
beneath  his  hand,  and  the  room  in  which  he  is 
seated.     Certainly,  he  has  no  heart  there. 

At  least  such  is  the  conclusion  of  Manonia, 
who  has  stolen  noiselessly  into  the  parlor,  and 
taken  a  seat  in  a  darkly  shadowed  corner  of  the 
hearth  with  her  knitting,  after  watching  him 
more  than  two  hours.  She  can  observe  him  and 
knit  at  the  same  time.  To  her  mind,  she  is  wit- 
nessing a  solitary  performance  of  a  highly 
wrought  dramatic  act ;  and  so  she  is. 

Sometimes  he  sings  in  a  low,  plaintively  sad  re- 
frain the  same  lines  over  and  over  again,  at  inter- 
vals of  some  minutes,  without  checking  the  cease- 
less scratch,  scratch  of  the  pen  : 

"  I  have  sailed  'neath  alien  skies; 

I  have  trod  the  desert  path ; 
I  have  seen  the  storm  arise. 

Like  a  giant  in  his  wrath ; 
Every  danger  I  have  known, 

That  a  reckless  life  can  feel, 
Yet  her  presence  is  not  flown, 

•And  her  bright  smiles  haunt  me  still.'  " 

At  length  he  throws  down  the  pen  rather  im- 
patiently, and  rests  his  forehead  on  the  velvet- 
cushioned  edge  of  the  table  for  several  minutes, 
breathing  laboriously  as  if  dozing;  then,  sud- 
denly rousmg  up  with  a  start,  he  soliloquizes 
aloud : 

"  Thou  fairy  image  of  bhghted  hopes.  Angel  of 
Consolation !  Why  haunt  my  solitary  wretched- 
ness, since  we  are  severed  for  evermore  ?" 

At  this  point  he  suddenly  discovers  the  pres- 
ence of  Manonia,  and,  nonplussed  with  confusion, 
he  ejaculates  with  stammering  embarrassment: 

"Oh!  a  thousand — oh! — pardon — Miss,  I  was 
not  aware — my  mind  was  straggling — I  forgot — 
was  quite  unconscious  of  your  presence  at  the 
13 


moment — must  have  been  absorbed  or  dreaming 
and  aroused  up  muttering.     Don't  be  alarmed." 

Manonia  :  "  No  harm,  sir.  I  should  beg  your 
pardon  for  being  here ;  but  the  fire  was  out  in  the 
dining-room,  and  I  came  quietly  in  here,  hoping 
not  to  disturb  you." 

Garland  :  "  You  owe  no  apologies  for  being  in 
your  own  parlor,  where  you  properly  reign  su- 
preme its  mistress.  It  is  I  that  owe  you  apologies 
and  penalties  for  having  usurped  its  use.  Treat 
my  presence  hereafter  as  though  you  were  alone. 
Never  quit  your  realm  again  because  I  am  sitting 
here,  either  Avriting  or  thinking.  Usually  I  am 
quiet.  I  will  no  more  think  aloud  when  you  are 
here." 

Manonia  :  "  Use  the  parlor  as  though  you  were 
at  home.  We  are  far  down  '  South  in  Dixie,' 
yet  still  we  strive  to  show  civil  strangers  who 
come  among  us,  always  the  most  cheerful  hospi- 
tality that  we  can  ;  and  to  extend  to  them  our 
blunt,  old-fashioned  style  of  welcome." 

Garland:  "Stranger!  civility!  home! — what 
deep  meaning  these  words  impart !  I  have  been 
so  long  among  the  rude  and  semi-civilized  that  I 
must  be  more  strange  than  I  am  stranger,  and 
strangely  uncivil.  I  am  informed  that  contact 
with  madmen  has  made  men  mad. 

"When  I  came  under  the  shadow  of  this 
friendly  roof,  thirty  months  had  then  elapsed 
since  I  had  uttered  a  word  to  a  lady  or  woman- 
kind ;  hence  it  is  no  wonder  that  I  am  uncouth, 
and  have  lost  my  wonted  politeness. 

"Better  days  and  brighter  thoughts  have  been 
my  lot. 

"  But  pardon  me,  I  am  beyond  the  boundary 
of  my  proper  sphere.  These  are  things  of  no 
import.  I  will  not  allude  to  them,  nor  will  I  thus 
intrude  upon  your  attention  again  any  other 
subject." 

Manonia  :  "  I  pity  you,  sir ;  and  am  persuaded 
that  it  is  a  question  replete  with  grave  import  to 
which  you  allude.  My  curiosity  to  know  more 
of  it  is  intensely  excited;  it  must  be  romantic,  and 
fraught  with  deeply  thrilling  interest.  Please, 
sir,  would  you  very  much  object  to  recounting  it 
for  me  ?" 

Garland:  "It  has  never  been  breathed  to 
mortal  ears;   and  I  have  always  intended  that  it 


194 


MYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


never  should  escape  my  lips.  At  this  moment, 
such  is  still  the  state  of  my  inclination.  I  can 
assure  you  that  in  it  there  is  not  one  iota  of  in- 
terest for  you ;  and  it  Avould  be  painful  to  me  to 
relate. 

"But  before  exphcitly  answering  your  ques- 
tion, tell  me,  please,  did  I  speak  inteUigibly  loud 
just  now?" 

Manonia  :  "  You  did,  sir,  as  clearly  and  as  dis- 
tinctly audible  as  you  do  even  now.  That  little 
sentence  is  what  has  most  tended  to  arouse  my 
curiosity !" 

G-ARLAXD  :  "  Then  you  have  a  clue  that  is  the 
key  to  my  story,  but  for  which  nothing  in  this 
world  could  induce  me  to  narrate  it,  because  in 
doing  so  the  pity  Avhich  you  now  generously 
cherish  for  me  will  vanish,  to  give  place  to  a  sen- 
timent of  contemptible  abhorrence.  At  all  events, 
however,  I  will  not  confide  it  to  you,  only  on  the 
express  condition  that  you  give  me  your  most 
sacred  promise  not  so  much  as  to  hint  it  to  any 
one  until  after  I  am  gone." 

Manonia:  "I  most  solemnly  promise  not  to 
divulge  it  even  after  you  are  gone,  should  you  so 
prefer ;  and  I  further  promise  that  my  f eehngs  of 
pity  shall  not  abate  because  of  the  story  being  an 
unpleasant  one  to  yourself. 

"  I  am  now  all  impatience  to  hear  a  real  life- 
picture  romance.  I  have  always  heard  that  truth' 
is  often  stranger  than  fiction." 

Garland  :  "  Very  well,  then,  if  this  story  must 
ever  be  told,  there  is  rarely  a  more  appropriately 
fitting  time  for  its  disclosure  than  to-night,  when 
the  war  and  wails  of  the  elements  are  distressing 
nature — in  strikingly  sympathetic  accord  with  the 
war  of  the  narrator's  life  with  the  tempest-lashed 
waves  of  Time,  and  the  storm  of  emotion  that  wiU 
surge  in  his  breast  while  the  slumbering  mystery 
is  unfolding  from  its  long  and  silent  sleep. 

"Nerve  yourself.  Miss  Donne,  to  hear  some 
shocking  recitals  ;  if  as  shocking  to  you  as  they 
are  painful  to  me,  I  much  fear  that  your  antici- 
pated pleasure  may  but  prove  a  mocking  disap- 
pointment. 

"  As  you  know,  from  the  tenor  of  my  inadver- 
•  'i  • 

tant  disclosure  a  few  moments  ago,  there   is  a 

lady  connected  with  it ;  and  you  are  aware  that 

Avithout  a  lady  the  story  would  be  wholly   di- 


vested of  every  semblance   of  the  romantic.     I 
tell  you  that  it  would  not  exist. 

"  You  have  heard  me  telling  your  father  about 
my  war  engendered  enemies  and  my  business 
career  since  the  war.  The  relation  the  lady  in 
question  bore,  both  to  the  machinations  of  those 
bitter,  unscrupulous,  unprincipled  enemies  and 
my  future  mercantile  plans  and  prospects  at  that 
time,  is  what  sent  me  aimlessly  adrift  on  the 
great  and  boisterous  ocean  of  life,  to  be  driven 
and  buffeted  as  a  weed  by  its  waves ;  and  doomed 
me  to  the  hard  and  pitiable  fate  of  being  an 
orphan  of  the  heart  for  evermore. 

"  Those  enemies  realized  that  this  was  my  only 
vulnerable  point,  and  assailed  it  with  fiendish 
vengeance.  I  loved  this  adorable  young  lady 
with  zealous  devotion,  and  I  believe  now,  that 
she  reciprocated  my  passionate  fondness. 

"My  enemies  perverted  truth,  and  concocted 
the  most  damnable  and  black  conspiracy  ever  con- 
ceived by  a  Satanic  mind — far  more  terrible  than 
the  swiftly  dispatching  dagger  of  the  assassin, 
because  it  inflicted  a  cureless  wound  of  hngering 
and  horrible  torture. 

"  Had  I  not  loved  this  girl,  or  had  she  alone, 
among  all  the  others  whose  friendship  and  esteem 
had  vanished,  stood  firm  and  confidingly  unshaken 
in  her  faith,  I  would  have  defied  the  whole  crew, 
and  shown  for  their  malicious  attack  a  disdainful 
contempt. 

"  But,  alas !  the  curse  of  vanished  centuries  was 
upon  me. 

"  My  faithful  confidential  clerk  and  a  Christian 
merchant  wrote  me  a  joint  letter,  bearing  the  de- 
spairing intelligence  of  the  thoroughly  complete 
revulsion  of  public  sentiment  unanimously  against 
me. 

"  This  pictured,  the  hopeless  estrangement  from 
me  of  the  friendship  of  the  young  lady's  family, 
which  declared  was  so  vindictively  bitter  that  the 
old  gentleman  who  was  by  many  years  my 
oldest  friend  in  that  section  of  country,  and  per- 
haps the  most  devoted,  personally,  that  I  had  in  the 
world,  would  not  so  much  as  condescend  to  write 
to  me  on  the  subject ;  but  that  he  had  suggested 
that  my  own  confidential  man  was  in  duty  bound 
to  write  me,  and  the  merchant  had  from  a  chari- 
table impulse,  voluntarily  joined  him. 


UNFOLDING  THE  MYSTERY. 


195 


''  They  informed  nie,  in  the  concluding  para- 
graph of  thcii'  letter,  that  while  they  were  dis- 
posed to  build  a  more  liberal  construction  out  of 
tlie  aflair  for  me,  than  any  other  person  in  the 
community,  still  the  circumstances  were  of  such  a 
nature  as  to  preclude  the  possibility  of  their  ever 
again  recognizing  me. 

"They  therefore  advised  me  to  have  my  afl'airs 
settled  by  an  attorney;  and  for  the  sake  of  my 
i)wn  feelings,  never  to  return  again  to  where 
naught  but  the  grave  of  my  hopes  would  be 
found. 

"Nothing — not  one  faint  gleam  of  the  sem- 
l)lance  of  hope — remained  for  me  on  the  face  of 
the  earth  after  I  had  read  that  heart-rending 
letter. 

"  This  drove  me  almost  mad.  For  me,  the 
Avorld  had  come  to  a  sudden  end.  Promptly,  over- 
come by  despair,  I  resolved  to  seek  the  only 
refuge  left  me :  the  friendly  shelter  of  the  rip- 
pling, peaceful  river. 

"  I  made  a  power  of  attorney  to  the  merchant 
just  referred  to,  authorizing  him  to  have  my  busi- 
ness wound  up,  and  my  earthly  aiFairs  settled; 
and  with  this  I  sent  a  large  sum  of  money  by 
express  to  pay  oflf  any  unsettled  balance  due  my 
patrons,  together  with  other  definitely  explicit 
instructions,  and  wrote  a  few,  hasty  farewell 
letters. 

"When  all  was  accomplished,  I  remembered 
that  I  had  a  balance  of  some  five  hundred  dollars 
in  the  hands  of  a  firm  in  the  city,  which  had  es- 
caped my  mind  while  making  up  my  documents. 
I  went  and  drew  it;  but  there  was  some  delay, 
so  that  the  train  passed  before  I  could  get  it 
ready;  and  I  left  it  at  the  express  oflfice  to  go 
the  next  day.  Then  I  returned  to  my  hotel,  and 
packed  and  labeled  my  trunk  for  shipment. 

"At  this  time,  the  sun  was  nearly  down.  I 
then  at  once  set  out  to  wend  my  way  to  some 
lonely  spot  on  the  river  below  the  city,  to  seek  a 
watery  grave. 

"  Just  as  twilight  was  beginning  to  drape  the 
earth  and  the  water  with  her  shadowy  mantle 
while  I  was  in  a  dim  pathway  in  a  dense  forest, 
rapidly  approaching  the  river  bank,  some  chil- 
dren who  lived  a  little  way  down  the  river,  over- 
took me. 


"A  bright,  talkative  httle  girl  of  the  party 
wanted  to  know  if  I  was  going  to  their  house ; 
and  when  informed  that  I  was  not,  she  promptly 
told  me  that  I  was  lost,  as  there  was  no  road  be- 
yond their  house — nothing  but  wild,  precipitous 
crags  and  cliffs. 

"She  then  told  me  a  story  about  a  man,  who, 
she  said,  had  drowned  himself  in  the  big,  deep 
bend  of  the  river  just  ahead  of  us,  and  that  the 
Devil  had  carried  his  soul  away  to  the  bad  place, 
because  the  preacher  said  that  whoever  kills  him- 
self is  doomed  to  torment. 

"  The  words  of  this  guileless  child  kndled  on 
my  wretched  heart,  and  I  faltered  and  wavered; 
then  softly  told  the  child  that  I  was  taking  a 
Avalk,  and  must  turn  and  hasten  back  to  the  city, 
or  darkness  would  overtake  me. 

"  Up  to  the  moment  that  I  had  met  these  inno- 
cent children,  I  had  only  thought  of  escaping 
from  the  intolerable  miseries  of  this  Hfe,  and  not 
of  those  to  which  I  would  be  flying  in  the  dark 
Unknown.  Since  they  aroused  my  mind  to  a  re- 
flective realization  of  the  horrible  step  I  was 
taking,  it  appeared  a  thousand  times  more  appall- 
ing and  terrible  than  all  the  multiplied  and  com- 
bined ills  of  earth,  whether  real  or  imaginary, 
could  possibly  be  ;  and  my  resolution  was  to  fly, 
fly — where,  I  knew  not,  cared  not,  if  it  was  but 
*  away  from  all  places,  all  scenes,  and  all  people, 
where  and  to  whom  I  had  ever  been  known. 

"  I  hastened  back  to  the  city,  to  my  room,  and 
snatched  up  my  shawl;  then  to  the  express  ofiice, 
and  withdrew  the  money  package  before  men- 
tioned; then  to  a  dark  alley,  where  I  wrapped 
myself  in  my  shawl,  pulled  my  hat  down  over 
my  eyes,  and  then  hurried  to  the  depot,  arriving 
barely  in  time  to  board  a  South-bound  train,  from 
the  dark  side  opposite  the  depot. 

"I  paid  my  fare  to  a  junction  about  one  hun- 
dred miles  distant;  crouched  down  in  a  dark  cor- 
ner, and  was  not  again  disturbed.  Arrived  at  the 
junction,  I  bought  a  through  ticket  to  the  farthest 
possible  Southern  point,  and  continued  the  jour- 
ney uninterruptedly. 

"Very  soon  thereafter  I  found  myself  in  a  yellow- 
fever-plague-stricken  city;  where  it  was  almost 
impossible  to  bury  the  victims  of  that  scourg- 
ing   epidemic,  so  terribly   rapid  and  frightfully 


196 


MYSTIC   ROMANCES   OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


numerous  were  the  cust-s  of  mortality.  I  deemed 
this  cause  more  worthy  of  my  hfe  than  the  river, 
and  plunged  into  it  to  aid  the  suffering  in  every 
way  in  my  power;  and  exposed  myself  day  and 
night  with  reckless  indifference  for  more  than 
two  months,  without  feeling  at  any  time  at  all 
physically  indisposed. 

"  From  that  point  onward  you  have  heard  my 
story  :  the  voyages  to  Mexico  and  South  Amer- 
ica ;  the  hide  trade,  and  the  railroad-building  in 
which  I  have  been  engaged  up  to  the  day  of  my 
arrival  here. 

"  From  the  moment  I  entered  the  car,  the  first 
night  of  my  flight,  up  to  this  night,  not  one 
familiar  object  or  face  has  ever  greeted  my  eye, 
and  all  who  ever  knew  me  deem  me  the  victim 
of  suicide.  Ere  now  I  have  been  long  since  for- 
gotten. 

"  Oh  that  all  the  people  and  memories  of  the 
past  were  only  as  dead  to  me  as  I  am  to  them. 
Heaven  alone  knows  my  vainly  silent  struggles 
to  consign  these  sadly  bitter  memories  to  sombre 
obHvion  and  never-awakening  f orgetf ulness !  But 
go  where  I  will,  do  what  I  may,  the  ghostly 
shadows  of  the  past  haunt  me  still,  haunt  me  ever. 

"  This  is  the  substance  of  my  story,  the  source 
of  my  sorrows.  If  the  details  on  any  special 
point  are  not  sufficiently  exphcit  to  satisfy  your_ 
curiosity,  you  are  at  liberty  at  some  future  time, 
opportunity  serving  you,  to  question  me. 

"  The  clock  has  just  tolled  the  hour  of  one ; 
now  is  the  time  that  ghosts  are  abroad,  and  that 
we  should  not  be  here." 

Manonia  :  "  Mercy,  how  late  it  is !  How  thank- 
ful I  am  for  the  courtesy  you  have  accorded  me 
in  narrating  this  story,  that  so  closely  bordei-s 
on  the  terrible  and  the  tragic.  It  has  aroused  in 
my  nature  a  deep  and  sympathetic  interest. 

"I  trust  that  our  strange  acquaintance  may 
not  prove  unpleasant  to  you  during  the  remain- 
der of  your  sojourn  with  us ,  and  so  I  must  say 
good-night.  Oh,  Mr.  Grarland,  I  am  so  sorry  for 
you!  " 

Garland  :  "  Grood-night.  May  my  story  not 
disturb  your  dreams." 

Left  alone,  he  continues  to  soliloquize  as  follow? : 

"  Gruileless  innocence  !  winning  witchery ! 
fairy    enchantress !      Unschooled    in    coquettish 


arts — a  novice  in  the  icy  formalities  of  the  cold- 
hearted  duplicity  of  the  giddy  social  world,  Na- 
ture's own  chUd  of  the  open  heart's  best,  ever 
true  and  pure  impulse !  Deep  black  eyes,  more 
to  be  dreaded  than  the  frowning  battlements  of 
Gibraltar,  and  more  irresistible !  Directed  against 
a  defenseless  heart,  it  could  but  become  their 
helpless  preJ^ 

"  But  my  heart,  had  I  one,  would  be  unmoved 
alike  by  the  emotions  of  hope  or  the  tremors  of 
dread.  Poor,  lone  wreck  of  the  past!  wretched, 
sick,  riven!  Hopes  may  spring  and  perish  in  thy 
fountainless  desert  without  provoking  one  pang 
of  disappointment  or  one  sigh  of  regret. 

"  Until  the  last  few  hours  arrived  with  their 
strange  events,  I  have  been  obstinately  resolved 
to  avoid  this  simple  child  of  Nature.  But  why 
deny  her  amusement,  if  such  there  be  for  her 
in  my  narrative  ?  Surely  it  would  be  most  dis- 
agreeable in  me  to  withhold  this  innocent  diver- 
sion when  I  can  accord  her  whatever  pleasure 
she  may  derive  from  it,  knowing  who  and  what 
she  is,  without  forgetting  who  and  what  I  am. 
The  guK  separating  our  spheres  is  as  impassable 
as  that  dividing  heaven  and  earth.  Hers,  purit}-, 
innocence,  and  truth;  mine,  deceit,  concealment 
and  falsehood — even  to  my  very  name.  I  would 
start  at  its  merely  true  echo  as  at  the  blast  of  the 
Archangel's  trumpet.  I  made  my  life,  without 
valid  cause,  a  false  nature,  that  has  since  been 
transformed  into  an  endless  curse. 

"  Her  impressions  can  be  naught  but  the  pass- 
ing thought  of  the  moment,  mine  but  the  cold  in- 
difference of  my  frozen  existence.  Away  hence 
with  these  insane  musings." 

This  poor  remorse-scourged,  conscience-strick- 
en wretch  bows  his  head,  overcome  by  the  subtle 
influence  of  the  stupefying  spell  that  sudden!}- 
thrills  liis  being  as  the  ethereal  form  of  an  evil 
spirit  approaches  him,  and  speaks  to  the  helpless, 
half-dreaming  ear : 

"  Hesitating,  ambling  hypocrite.  It  is  not  in 
thy  anatomy  to  serve  Heaven's  exacting  King; 
still  with  my  brand  of  falsehood  decking  thy 
brow,  thou  seekest  to  rebel  against  allegiance  to 
my  power. 

"  A  flickering  spark  of  respect  for  the  Naza- 
rene  hath  twice,  through  His  agencies,  ^tayed  thy 


UNFOLDING  THE  IVIYSTERY. 


197 


murderous  hand,  raised  to  destroy  thyself.  Thou 
wast  forewarned  of  the  affliction  thou  wouldst 
cause  others,  and  the  bitter  wretchedness  of  thy 
own  lot,  didst  thou  continue  to  live. 

"  If  thy  loyalty  must  be  retained  by  strategy, 
thy  restless  ambition  and  false  position  suffice. 
Go  forth  and  prosper.  Thy  identity  is  oblivion. 
This  fair  daughter  of  Grace  will  love  thee,  will  be 
thy  foundation  and  spring  to  wealth.  It  wert 
well  for  thee  to  secure  the  peaceful  sweets  of  life, 
and  cease  to  roam  aimlessly  over  the  earth.  Her 
e^'es  shalt  soften  thy  stubborn  heart,  her  charms 
tame  thy  stern  will,  so  obdurately  steeled  against 
their  alluring  spell.  Softly,  unconsciously,  but 
steadily  and  surely,  will  they  find  their  way  into 
thy  being.  Thou  desireth  peace,  honor,  purity — 
they  bide  thj'  pleasure. 

"  When  thy  star  is  in  its  ascendency  and  the 
.sun  of  glory  is  shining  brilliantly  around  thee,  we 
will  meet  again.  If  then  found  obdurate  and 
vacillating,  disdaining  to  obey  the  dictates  of  thy 
ambition,  pride  wilt  rouse  thee  to  action. 

"  This  child  of  Heaven  wilt  tame  thy  fierce 
nature,  but  only  to  store  greater  reserves  of  wrath 
against  thee ;  for  unto  all  others,  with  continued 
disobedience  to  my  will,  shalt  be  added  the  curse 
of  her  wrongs. 

"  Serve  me  truly  and  faithfully,  and  all  shalt 
be  well  Avith  thee  on  the  earth.  Seek  to  rebel 
against,  and  attempt  to  fly  from  my  service,  and 
the  bitter  fruits  of  the  past  have  been  but  the 
diluted  essence  of  those  thou  shalt  ever  pluck,  in- 
flicting miserable  torture,  as  the  inevitable  conse- 
quences of  disobedience.  Be  wise,  and  escape 
them.     Until  then,  adieu !  " 

Garland  :  "  Thank  Heaven,  it  is  but  a  dream ! 
The  horrid  nightmare  conjured  into  shadowy  vis- 
ions by  the  vivid  recollections  of  the  by-gone 
time,  ever  fresli  and  present  memories,  as  undying 
as  their  wounds  in  my  heart  are  cureless,  pro- 
voked but  to  bleed  afresh,  by  recalhng  and  re- 
picturing  their  sadly  woeful  scenes. 

"Vain  and  idle  dreams!  Your  colors  of  more  bitter 
afflictions  have  no  terrors  for  me,  your  flattering 
illusions  of  happiness  no  charms.  BetAveen  me 
and  this  fair  Southland  flower  there  is  not,  never 
can  be,  affinity.  Rather  than  make  one  advance 
ill  the  direction  even  of  attempting  to  gain  her 


most  indifferent  esteem ;  yes,  rather  than  so  much 
as  consider  it  seriously,  I  would  suffer  my  re- 
maining arm  to  be  severed  from  my  battle-scarred 
body. 

"Cruel  delusions  of  the  sad  past!  I  have  not 
forgotten  thy  bitterly  deceptive,  hear t-Av ringing 
pangs,  that  I  should  permit  anything  on  earth, 
however  alluring,  to  tempt  me  into  l^etraying  in- 
nocent purity,  Avith  the  hope-blasting  phantom  of 
a  spectral  and  shadoAA'y  love,  was  such  vile  base- 
ness within  the  bounds  of  possibility. 

"No;  a  thousand  times  no !  Neither  this  most 
beautiful  creature,  nor  any  other  fair  daughter  of 
earth  shall  ever  behold  me  in  any  hght  sufficiently 
amiable  to  enlist  even  so  much  as  a  mere  passing 
sentiment  of  cordial  friendship. 

"  This  is  my  resolution  despite  the  dreams  of 
day  or  the  nightmare  visions  of  darkness. 

What!  I  the  blighter  of  womanly  happiness, 
to  gratify  the  selfish  cravings  of  an  empty  heart, 
famishing  for  unattainable  peace?  Never! 
Never  ! !  Never  ! ! ! 


CHAPTER  LYI. 

the    I.MPRUnEXT    WOOING. 

"  When  she  had  spoken,  I  turned  to  go  away, 
But  the  sweet  little  creature,  she  bid  me  to  stay; 
She  said   that  she  was    lonely— her  heart  it  would 

break — 
Her  voice— 'twas  so  lovely,  her  hand  I  did  take." 
— Saveet  Evelina. 

The  days  come  and  go,  while  Garland's  engage- 
ment hastens  to  its  close. 

Each  night,  one  after  the  other,  finds  him  at  his 
usual  post  and  occupation,  Avith  patient  Manonia 
always  at  hers,  in  the  corner  with  the  traditional 
knitting. 

In  her  opinion  he  is  rudely  taciturn  and  morose, 
but  in  replying  to  her  questions,  to  Avhich  he  al- 
ways repHes  Avith  pohshed  politeness  and  truly 
refined  courtesy.  But  still,  tliis  fact  notwithstand- 
ing, she  experiences  an  embarrassing  delicacy  iu 
asking  questions  or  introducing  conversations, 
when  the  man  is  incessantly  at  work,  as  he  always 
is  until  long  after  that  hour  when  stern  propriety 
forces  her  to  bid  him  good-night.      She  deems 


198 


IVIYSTIC  KOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


him  icy  indiflforence ;  unemotional  selfishness,  and 
utterly  devoid  of  appreciation. 

During  the  last  week  of  his  sojourn,  as  then 
contemplated,  he  is  invited  to  the  wedding  of 
one  couple  and  to  the  festival  of  another  couple. 
It  is  so  arranged,  that  in  each  instance  it  is  neces- 
sary for  him  to  accompany  Manonia.  And  such 
is  the  position  in  which  he  is  placed,  that  no 
man  not  an  utter  stranger  to  chivalrous  gallan- 
try, can  decline  without  incurring  the  stigma  of 
being  a  morose  boor. 

The  wedding  is  five  miles,  from  the  Donn6 
plantation. 

Time :  early  candle-light. 

The  supper  is  over,  and  at  about  ten  o'clock 
the  guests  begin  to  disperse. 

When  Garland  and  Manonia  are  ready  to  take 
their  leave,  it  is  ascertained  that  the  horse  which 
he  rode  has  shpped  the  halter,  and  quietly  de- 
parted home  without  a  rider. 

This  necessitates  Garland,  or  rather  he  accepts 
it  as  the  inevitable,  to  walk  back  in  front  of 
Manonia's  horse,  a  feat  which  he  performs  so 
swiftly  and  so  very  cheerfully  that  the  young 
lady  cannot  restrain  herself  from  expressing  en- 
thusiastic applause. 

The  evening  after  the  wedding,  Manonia  is  at 
the  store  when  Garland  is  ready  to  set  out  for 
the  plantation.  As  a  matter  of  course,  they  ride 
out  together. 

The  next  evening.  Garland  and  Manonia  are 
returning  to  the  plantation  from  the  festival  just 
about  sunset.  When  some  two  miles  from  their 
destination,  Garland's  leg,  a  little  above  the  knee 
strikes  a  snag  that  tears  his  pantaloons  down  to 
the  hem  at  the  bottom. 

This  circumstance  so  embarrasses  him  as  to  pro- 
voke Manonia  to  tease  him  on  account  of,  as  she 
styles  it,  such  an  insignificant  trifle  ;  too  ridiculous 
to  be  confused  by,  since  he  could  not  have  avoided 
this  unexpected  accident. 

On  the  evening  foUowing  the  festival,  and  the 
last  but  one  that  Garland  ever  expects  to  spend 
at  the  Donne  homestead,  he  returns  from  the 
store  to  theplantation  again  with  Manonia.  The 
last  two  miles  of  the  ride  is  through  a  frightful 
storm  of  wind,  and  in  deluging  torrents  of  cold 
pelting  raiu. 


After  supper,  Garland  excuses  himself  to  the 
old  planter,  and  proceeds  at  once  to  his  writing, 
which  he  designs  to  finish  that  night.  From  the 
moment  that  he  takes  up  the  pen  until  half-past 
nine  o'clock,  he  utters  a  single  word  to  no  one; 
nor  does  the  customary  voice  of  Manonia  greet 
his  ear,  who  he  imagines  has  retired  in  conse- 
quence of  the  drenching  she  has  received.  At 
the  hour  mentioned,  his  work  is  completed,  and 
he  throws  down  the  pen,  exclaiming : 

"  Thank  God  this  loathsome,  monotonous  task 
is  done." 

Manonia:  "And  you  have  finished  your  labors, 
have  you,  Mr.  Garland?  " 

Garland  :  Oh,  yes  ;  at  last,  Miss  Donne,  they 
are  completed.  They  have  been  very  irksome  and 
excessively  slavish,  because  I  have  performed 
the  manual  part  of  them  in  just  one-third  of  tlie 
time  they  justly  demanded. 

Manonia  :  "  Oh,  yes,  sir,  you  have  worked 
.hard  and  constantly.  I  have  often  wondered 
how  you  could  endure  it  so  long  and  incessantly." 

Garland  :  "  Ah,  Miss  Donne,  this  has  become 
a  second  nature  with  me,  to  work  unremittingly 
whenever  I  have  the  opportunity.  But  this 
experience  of  teaching  I  shall  never  repeat 
again  I  have  had  enough  of  it  to  last  me  all  my 
days. 

"What  a  fearful  night  without!  How  pite- 
ously,  lonely,  and  plaintively  sad  is  the  moaning 
and  the  groaning  of  the  wind.  It  is  on  a  night 
such  as  this  that  I  always  think  of  the  poor 
tempest-driven  crews,  far,  far  at  sea." 

Manonia:  "Such  nights  are  fearful  on  land; 
on  the  sea  they  must  be  indescribably  terrible. 
I  shudder  to  think  of  a  ship  full  of  peojile  at  the 
mercy  of  an  angry  sea." 

Garland:  "The  buflfeting  Avaves  of  Time  on 
the  sea  of  life,  when  the  winds  are  adverse 
and  boisterous,  are  yet  still  worse;  for  I  have 
experienced  both  to  an  ample  degree,  and  am, 
therefore,  able  to  arrjve  at  a  fairly  correct  con- 
clusion. With  the  Avild  raging  of  a  tempest- 
lashed  ocean  is,  in  mj'^  mind,  closely  allied  the 
idea  of  a  life  tossed  hither  and  thither  over  the 
earth,  bj'  the  all-impelling  heavings  of  the  cruel 
waves  of  unmerciful  disaster.  From  the  one  I 
am  ever  unable  Avhollv  to  dissever  the  idea  of  the 


THE  laiPRUDENT  WOOING. 


199 


other;  I  deem  the  affinity  of  both  as  being  to 
each  other  so  inseparably  connected." 

Manonia:  "This  much  reminds  me  of  that 
other  wild  night  on  which  you  told  me  the  sadly 
impressible  story  of  the  great  trial  and  bitter 
disappointment  of  your  life. 

"  Your  sojourn  with  us  now  draws  speedily  to 
a  close.  One  evening  more,  and  we  will  no 
longer  see  you  sitting  there  at  that  table,  writing 
as  if  for  dear  life;  nor  hear  the  sound  of  your 
voice  again,  softl}^  humming  some  sad  refrain. 

"  One  week  hence,  and  we  will  not  engage  so 
much  as  one  mere  passing  thought  of  yours. 
Alas!  what  a  pity  that  in  this  short  life,  we 
make  agreeable  acquaintances,  only  to  part  with 
them  soon  and  forever." 

Gtarland:  "Yes,  Miss  Donn6,  my  duties  close 
here  to-morrow.  I  must  hasten  to  others.  But 
when  and  Avherever  I  go,  I  shall  bear  with  me 
grateful  and  pleasing  memories  of  the  kind  hos- 
pitality so  generously  extended  to  me  beneath 
this  friendly  roof,  that  will  live  many  days — yes, 
years  hence. 

"  Parting  with'  friends,  old  or  new,  when  we 
feel  assured  that  it  is  to  meet  again  nevermore,  is 
jjainfully  sad.  With  regretful  reluctance  have  I 
parted  from  acquaintances  of  an  hour,  years  ago, 
and  shall  forget  them  entirely — never .  Hence 
you  perceive  from  this  circumstance  how  impos- 
sible it  will  be  for  me  to  forget  this  kind  family. 

"But,  by  the  way,  last  evening  you  said  that  to- 
night you  would  volunteer  me  some  sound  advice." 

Manonia:  "So  I  did  promise,  and  am  ready 
to  perform.  I  advise  you  to  go  back  at  once  and 
seek  the  girl  whom  you  loved  so  much,  or  some 
other  one;  marry,  and  settle  down.  Briefly  and 
pointedly,  this  is  my  advice. "_, 

G-arland  :  "  Such  counsel  is  more  easily  prof- 
fered than  followed.  As  to  my  lady-love  of  yore, 
she  is  as  dead  to  me  as  though  she  was  all  this 
time  peacefully  sleeping  in  the  gloomy  church- 
yard.    We  are  severed  forever. 

"  True  it  is  that  I  might  seek,  and,  after  long 
and  patient  years  of  cultivated  acquaintance,  en- 
gage the  affections  of  a  lady  suited  to  my  fancy, 
before  I  had  told  my  story,  but  certainly  not  after. 
And  if  not  related  until  after  securing  esteem,  then 
that  favorable  sentiment  would  quickly  vanish. 


"T  have  neither  the  inclination,  the  patience 
nor  the  time  requisite  to  undertake  and  pursue  so 
delicate  an  enterprise ;  and,_f urthermore,  I  do  not 
intend  ever  again  to  recount  my  painful  story. 
Thus  you  see  how  utterly  impossible  it  would  be 
for  me  to  follow  your  advice ;  for  wliich  I  am, 
nevertheless,  gratefully  thankful  to  you." 

Manonia:  "All  this  is  purely  imaginary; 
would  rarely  prove  to  be  a  true  reahty.  My  ad- 
vice is  good,  sound,  and  practicable." 

Garland:  "I  readily  grant  you  all  but  the 
practicability. 

"  I  shall  never  return  to  that  region  which  was 
the  location  of  my  sad  scenes  of  the  past ;  hence, 
in  order  to  follow  your  advice  it  would  be  neces- 
sary for  me  to  sue  for  the  hand  of  some  fair 
stranger. 

"Years  are  likely  to  dawn  and  wane,  as  the 
ceaseless  gliding- wheel  of  Time  unerringly  makes 
its  never-varying  revolutions,  before  I  am  again 
as  much  acquainted  with  another  young  lady  as  I 
am  now  with  yourself. 

"  Just  imagine,  merely  for  the  sake  of  argument, 
that  you  were  yourself  placed  in  that  unenviable 
predicament:  then  recall  my  dark  chapter,  as  de- 
tailed to  you,  and  you  can  but  vaguely  appreciate 
the  position  of  the  hapless  fair  one  whom  you 
have  advised  me  to.  victimize." 

Manonia  :  "  I  am  not  in  her  place,  and  hence 
am  unprepared  either  to  make  or  imagine  an 
answer  for  her." 

Garland:  "Then  imagine  yourself  in  her 
place,  and  we  will  continue  the  argument." 

Manonia  :  "  No,  sir ;  that  is  a  position  in  life 
that  I  cannot  occupy  by  imagination,  but  must  be 
solicited  to  fill  it." 

Garland:  "Well,  then,  I  will,  in  order  to 
humor  the  current  of  the  argument,  and  to  drive 
you  from  an  erroneous  position  on  untenable 
ground,  solicit  you  to  occupy  her  position,  and  to 
answer  for  her.    That  is  sufficiently  pointed." 

Manonia  :  "  The  question  would  have  to  as- 
sume a  more  earnestly  serious  form,  on  your  part, 
before  I  entertain  it." 

Garland  :  "  With  the  same  seriousness,  then, 
if  you  please,  as  your  own  sentiment  could  possi- 
bly be,  relative  to  the  same  question." 


200 


MYSTIC   ROMANCES   OF   THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


Maxoma:  '•Then,  in  that  case,  I  will  assume 
the  argument." 

Garland:  '''Well,  then,  Miss  Donne,  could 
you,  under  all  the  circumstances,  after  a  fair  de- 
gree of  acquaintance,  so  much  as  barely  entertain 
the  idea  of  becoming  my  wife  ?  "  i 

Manonia  :     "  I  could,  without  hesitation,  pro-    j 
vided  you  promise  never  to  take  me  far  away 
from  father  and  mother." 

G-arland:  "But  you  can't  mean  it.  You  say 
this  merely  to  sustain  your  argument  in  support 
of  a  false  doctrine." 

Maxoxia:  "I  mean  it  in  good,  quiet  earnest- 
ness, if  your  question  means  the  same." 

Garland  :  "  Your  heart  and  hand,  and  the 
seal  of  the  first  kiss  of  love ! " 

Manonia:     "Yes." 

Garland:  "Why,  Miss  Donne,  you  must  be 
rashly  dreaming!  Consider  well  what  j^ou  are 
doing,  before  plunging  into  the  darkness — a  step 
of  which  you  will  surely  repent,  and  a  vow  from 
which  you  would,  after  due  deliberation,  plead 
for  a  release.  You  should  know  a  husband  long 
and  well." 

Manonia:  "Marriage  is  a  lottery  of  life.  I 
know  you  about  as  well  as  it  is  possible  for  a  single 
girl  to  know  a  man.  Those  whom  I  have  long 
known  and  esteemed  as  being  ideal  models  of 
perfection,  have  proven  sad  failures  as  husbands, 
and  rendered  miserable  the  lives  of  the  poor,  con- 
fiding girls  who  thus  rashly  intrusted  their  happi- 
ness to  their  keeping." 

Garland:  "But,  my  dear  young  lady,  reflect 
a  little.  I  am  both  nameless  and  heartless,  well 
calculated  to  render  a  fair,  a  hopeful  life  such  as 
yours,  miserable  with  the  most  cruel  pangs  of 
bitter  disappointment.  I  am  not  an  object  worthy 
ot  a  pure  and  priceless  afi'ection,  such  as  yours 
would  be;  nor  am  I  able  to  reward  it  with  that 
reciprocally  deep,  true,  and  unblemished  devotion 
which  it  would  demand  and  expect,  and  for  which 
the  unquenched  thirst  of  a  pure  and  loving  heart 
would  ever  pine  in  vain. 

"  That  day,  when  it  would  have  been  possible 
for  me  to  scatter  some  roses  among  the  keen 
thorns  of  life,  to  cheer  and  gladden  its  di-eary, 
trial-beset,  sorrow-incumbered  pathway  for  some 
true,   aflfectionate,    pure   and   good   woman,  has 


gone  by.  You  would  but  waste  your  young  allec- 
tions  and  lavish  your  heavenly  concentrated  love 
on  the  spectral  phantom  of  a  most  bitterly  cruel 
delusion. 

-I  should,  with  all  the  debilitated  force  of  the 
shattered  fragments  of  my  once  strongly  imjietu- 
ous  and  bravely  ennobled  spirit,  strive  to  render 
your  life  happy,  and  to  reward  j^our  devotional 
sacrifice,  made  for  a  wretched  man, with  that  bliss- 
ful comfort  for  which  all  hearts  sigh  with  longing 
fondness — but,  alas,  only  in  vain !  Earthly  happi- 
ness and  I  are  hopelessly  estranged;  with  me  it 
will  nevermore  dwell.  And  the  ghostly  shadows 
of  the  past  that  haunt  me  forever,  would  darken 
and  distress  your  life,  for  they  are  contagious 
blighters  of  all  hope-springing  consolation.    _ 

"Again,  there  is  another  serious  question  for 
our  consideration.  This  union  could  be  thought 
of  only  as  an  afiair  of  the  future.  Should  I  em- 
brace it,  and  was  it  once  again  to  rekindle  in  my 
heart  one  flickering  spark  of  long-extinguished 
liope,  during  the  long  absence  before  the  proba- 
tional  time  would  elapse,  while  the  little  bird  was 
singing  in  my  partially  re-animated  heart  its  de- 
lusive song  of  hope,  in  the  lonely  railroad  camp, 
you  would  slowly  but  surely  repent  of  this  rashly 
precipitate  act.  My  heart's  softened  incrusta- 
tion would  once  more  be  subjected  to  the  tortur- 
ing cauterization  of  the  searing  iron,  and  receive 
in  its  crushed  and  mangled  mass  one  more  wound 
to  bear  with  me  in  still,  cold,  unmurmuring-,  blood- 
less silence.  Imagine,  reflect  on  all  this,  as  it  must 
transpire." 

Manonia  :  "  There  is  no  necessity  for  you  to  go 
on  the  railroad  again.  You  have  an  opportunity 
to  engage  in  business  here.  You  can  go,  and 
arrange  your  railroad  afi'airs  and  return  in  tlu-ee 
or  four  days.  For  more  or  longer  absence  there  i$ 
no  need. 

"Then  we  can  often  see  each  other  during 
the  season  of  probation  which  we  may  deem  ap- 
propriate to  adopt.  In  the  meantime,  I  shall 
strive  to  dispel  your  fears,  and  prove  to  your 
satisfaction  that  I  am  not  only  a  most  violent 
detester  of,  but  also  an  utter  stranger  to.  fickle 
inconstancy. 

"  My  first  love  was  blasted  on  the  bloody  bat- 
tle-field.    For  that  true  and  devoted  one,  I  have 


§    c 

!2     '^ 


THE  IMPEUDENT  WOOING. 


201 


now  mourned  longer  than  you  lia-\e  mourned  for 
your  lost  idol.  I  never  expect  you  to  love  me 
as  you  once  loved  her,  nor  can  I  love  again  as  I 
did  once.  On  this  point  there  should  be  between 
us  a  mutually  consonant  sympathy. 

"  I  see  in  you  a  noble  manliness  going  to  de- 
struction, and  merely  because  you  see  proper  to 
estrange  yourself  from  the  social  world.  You 
can  yet  be  saved  and  won  back  to  life  aud  hope, 
and  I  can  render  you  cheerful  and  happy." 

GtArland:  "  Then  you  shall  be  my  divine  genius, 
come  weal  or  come  woe  !  I  am  going  to  take  you 
at  your  word.  By  the  stage  to-morrow  night  I 
will  go,  and  cancel  my  railroad  engagements,  and 
return  at  once,  to  await  the  time  when  I  shall  con- 
summate one  with  you,  my  volunteer  guardian 
angel!  Xow  then,  that  fair  hand  and  sacred 
seal." 

Manoxia  :  "  There,  my  word  is  pledged.  Now 
Avhile  you  still  hold  my  hand,  promise  me  on  the 
sacred  honor  of  a  gentleman  that  you  will  return 
and  faithfully  fulfill  this  life- and  hope-depending 
engagement  with  me." 

G-arland:  "I  certainly  will.  Though  false  to 
myself  and  all  the  world  besides  I  Avill  strive  to 
be  true  and  faithful  to  you." 

Manonia  :  "  That  suffices.  Now  pray  excuse 
me.     Grood-night." 

G-ARLAND :  "  G-ood-night,  fair  angel  of  the  South, 
good-night. 

"  Heaven  defend  you,  poor  confiding  child  of 
Nature's  own  sweet  innocence !  You  are  betray- 
ed, deceived,  and  have  bartered  away  your  pure 
life's  happiness  for  a  shadowy  skeleton  of  ill-fated, 
hope-wasting  delusion,  the  treacherous  oflfspring  of 
mere  mythical  dreams.  Madly  have  you  plunged 
;Vom  the  giddy  summit  of  the  precipice,  down, 
deep  doAvn  the  yawning  abyss  into  the  fathom- 
less gulf  of  unending  despair.  I  lured  you  not. 
I  desired  not,  do  not  desire,  this  very  strange 
complication. 

'■'Oh  ye  shadowy  powers,  controlling  my  ill- 
starred  destiny,  bear  me  witness,  that,  in  order  to 
have  it  not  thus,  I  would  part  with  my  remaining 
arm !  It  would  be  more  honorable,  yes,  ten  thou- 
sand times  more  honorable  to  break  this  vow,  that 
should  be  sacred,  than  consummate  it,  and  thus 
make  and  help  along  the  burning  shame  to  Avhich 


it  tends,  and  tlie  untold  ills  to  which  it  must  in- 
evitalily  lead. 

"  Doubtless  but  few  men  are  worthy  the  hand 
she  throws  away  on  a  nameless  wretch.  Who 
could  love  angels,  must  fondly  love  her.  But 
what  is,  whatever  can  be  my  love  but  the  pois- 
onous breath  of  pestilential,  hope-blighting  de- 
struction ?  Ah !  the  bitter  ashen-cored  fruit  of 
the  Dead-sea  shore;  tempting  perhaps  to  the 
eye,  but  full  of  and  laden  with  contagious  bane, 
that  will  sap  and  dry  up  the  healthful  current  of 
her  peaceful,  confiding  soul.  Alas  I  alas!  What 
have  I  done  ?  What  must  I  do  ?  What  can  I 
do?"      • 

The  night  before  the  one  on  which  Garland  is 
to  return  from  his  trip,'to  cancel  his  railroad  en- 
gagements, poor  Manonia,  whose  day-dreams  are 
replete  with  ecstatic  anticipations  of  future  bliss, 
sleeps  peacefully  on  her  couch  of  spotless  white — 
though  less  white  and  pure  than  her  own  guile- 
less life  and  innocent  heart.  As  she  thus  sleeps 
in  dreams,  an  Angel  of  Mercy  appears  by  her  bed- 
side and  speaks  to  her  : 

"  Gentle  child  of  earth,  lend  thy  pure  spirit's 
ear  to  a  voice  of  warning  in  mercy  sent  unto  thee. 
Beware  of  the  stranger  whom  thou  hast  most 
imprudently  enslirined  in  thy  innocent  heart;  and 
escape  while  yet  there  is  time,  ere  thou  awake, 
as  thou  must  and  shalt,  firom  thy  dream  of  bliss 
to  find  it  but  a  dreadful  woe,  that  wilt  sorely 
grieve  thee,  and  for  which  thou  shalt  Aveep  most 
bitterly.     He  desireth  to  let  thee  go  free." 

Poor  Manonia  awakes  with  a  start,  weeping  as 
though  her  tender  heart  would  break. 

Manonia:  "What  horrid  dreams!  How  for 
my  love  I  have  wept,  and  saAv  my  future  life  full 
of  misery.  I  Avonder  if  he  will  come  back  to- 
morrow, or  Avill  he  never  return?  Away,  idle 
dreams  and  despicable  doubts  I  He  will  come:  all 
Avill  be  well  •  I  will  be  happy. 

"  Though  angels  and  men  revile,  still  AA'ill  I  trust 
liira  Avith  an  unshaken,  steadfast  and  abiding  faith 
— as  true  and  constant  as  the  rocks  that  all  the 
ocean's  fury  cannot  shake,  as  firmly  abiding  as  the 
everlasting  hills ! " 


202 


MYSTIC  KOMANCES  OF   THE  BLUE  AND   THE   GKEY. 


CHAPTER   LVII. 

THE  wanderer's    PRIZE    IX    THE    LOTTERY  OF    LIFE. 

"Oh  beauty!  fatal  toeauty,  that  could  lure, 
The  sous  of  Heaven  from  their  blissful  sjjhere, 

To  oarth,  sin,  flood— the  wrath  of  God  t'endure— 
Who  turnM  not  from  that  doom,  when  warn'd  from 
here. 

Beauty  is  but  a  vain  and  doubtful  good, 

A  shining  gloss  that  fadeth  suddenly; 
A  flower  that  dies  when  first  it  'gins  to  bud, 

A  brittle  glass  that's  broken  presently."       , 

— Shakspeaee. 

NuBE  G-ARLAND,  as  he  is  known  to  the  Donne 
family,  returns  promptly,  and  in  strict  compliance 
with  his  solemn  vow  made  to  the  strangely  in- 
fatuated Manonia. 

We  say  that  he  returns.  Yes,  he  returns,  fully 
resolved  to  tmdo  the  part  thus  far  wrought  to- 
ward the  consummation  of  a  seriously  complicated 
mischief  and  an  inestimable  wrong. 

In  his  own  mind,  he  is  fully  prepared  to  tear 
himself  rudely  away  from  her,  in  Hie  event  that 
he  is  unsuccessful  in  prevailing  on  the  young  lady 
to  put  the  affair  in  the  great  and  promiscuous 
category  of  idle  jests. 

"While  he  is  a  man,  agreeable  to  his  own  story 
as  rekted  to  Manonia,  who  has  been  guilty  of  a 
terrible  indiscretion  which  clearly  demonstrates 
a  very  lowly  ebbed  moral  courage,  that  consigns 
him  to  pass  his  days  under  the  dark  shadows  of 
the  cloud  of  a  life-long  and  unavaiHng  regret,  he 
is  not  hopelessly  dead  to  the  keen  sensibilities  of 
the  finer  and  more  ennobling  impulses  of  a  nature 
constitutionally  exalted  and  true.  He  knows, 
feels  and  appreciates  to  the  fullest  and  most  ter- 
rible extent,  the  all-crushing  weight  of  the  bur- 
den of  his  own  curse,  which  he  deems  will  but 
prove  the  sure  and  inevitable  despoiler  of  the 
peace  and  joy  of  Manonia's  pure  and  faith- 
abounding  life.  For  himself,  he  realizes  a  deep 
sense  of  the  unmistakable  consciousness  that 
nothing  earthly  can  ever  impart  so  much  as  the 
most  transient  and  fleeting  ecstasies  of  true  and 
substantial  happiness;  and  that,  therefore,  it  will 
be  both  a  moral  and  a  physical  impossibility  for 


him  to  bestow  on  any  one  aught  but  wretched 
miser}'. 

This  sad  fate  he  most  earnestly  desires  that 
Manonia  shall  escape  ;  and  he  shudders  at  the 
gloomy  contemplation  of  the  stern  ghost  of  her 
ever-approaching  yet  never-ending,  afflicting  dis- 
appointments, that  is  certain  to  haunt  both  him- 
self and  her.  To  avoid  this,  furthermore  aug- 
ments his  anxiety  to  disentangle  her,  and  free 
himself  from  the  meshes  of  Cupid's  ingeniously 
designed  net;  which  it  is  almost  beyond  the  lat- 
itude of  doubt,  was  set  by  the  young  lady  her- 
self, either  unwittingly  or  willfully. 

As  to  Manonia,  she  is  too  pure,  too  innocent 
and  good ;  too  deeply  imbued  with  the  confiding, 
joyous,  rapturous  quintescence  of  nature,  in  the 
primeval  beauty  of  its  unsullied  endowmenfe  even 
to  heed  the  admonitory  dreams  of  suspicion, 
although  whispered  in  dulcet  strains  by  an  angel 
of  light.  How,  then,  may  she  be  expected  to  doubt 
with  her  open  eyes,  especially  when  that  doubt- 
ing must  run  contrary  to  the  fondest  j^earnings 
of  her  tender  lieart  ? 

Descended  on  her  mother's  side  directly  from 
the  good,  olden-time  primitive  Quakers  of  North 
Carolina,  and  on  her  father's  side  from  a  clear- 
lilooded  Scotch-Irish  line, — to  which  many  tradi- 
tional superstitions  inherent  with  both  nations 
from  which  it  sprung  still  cling  with  tenacious 
obstinacy ;  from  the  peculiar  religious  tenets  of 
the  one  side,  and  the  strangely  superstitious  faith 
of  the  other, — she  imbibed  the  idea — firmly,  im- 
movably fixed  is  it  in  her  mind  as  an  infallible 
doctrine — that  in  the  lottery  of  life,  for  each  man 
and  each  woman  there  is  a  mate — a  connubial 
mate — styled  "the  right  one";  and  that  if  they 
will  but  patiently  bide  the  time,  one  will  at  last 
appear ;  the  two  will  finallj'  meet  and  recognize 
each  other;  and  some  circumstance,  however 
trifling  it  may  be  in  appearance,  will,  notwith- 
standing the  absurdity  of  the  confidence,  ulti- 
mately lead  on  to  the  destined  result  of  their 
union. 

Garland  struggles  persistently  for  a  time,  but 
struggles  in  vain,  to  persuade  the  young  lady  that 
it  is  impossible  for  him  to  regard  the  affair  in  any 
other  light  but  that  of  a  mere  jest — a  simple,  pas- 
time flirtation  on  her  part;  or   that  it  will  be 


THE  WANDERER'S  PRIZE   IN  THE  LOTTERY  OF  LIFE. 


203 


necessary  for  liiin  to  make  an  Eastern  business 
trip  before  engaging  in  permanent  co-partner- 
ship with  her  brother. 

Slie  behoves  that  he  is  her  fate-ordained  life- 
companion,  and  resolves  to  hold  him  firmly  to 
the  responsible  post  of  liability  to  which  he  com- 
mitted himself.  He  is  truly  compromised,  and 
finds  himself,  at  last,  without  one  single  expe- 
dient of  an  honorable  character,  by  which  it  may 
be  at  all  possible  to  extricate  himself  from  that 
position. 

And,  as  if  to  multiply  his  already  distressing 
embarrassment,  he  begins  most  sensibly  to  ex- 
perience unmistakable  indications  of  the  certainty 
that  he  is  rapidly  passing  under  the  supreme 
influence  of  the  all-controlhng  power  of  her 
magnetic  spell,  which  with  him  fast  becomes 
irresistible. 

Less  and  less  strongly  grows  his  resolution  to 
tear  himself  violently  away  from  the  luring  fasci- 
nation and  witchery  of  her  sway.  At  first  he 
hesitates ,  then,  after  a  second  protracted  inter- 
view, he  wavers;  and,  finally,  in  three  "or  four 
days,  he  abandons  the  idea  of  flight  altogether, 
and  unconditionally  surrenders, with  a  fairly  firm 
resolution  to  devote  his  life  to  the  fair  woman 
who  declares  that  she  is  going  to  save  him ;  to 
deliver  him  from  the  burdensome  oppression  of 
remorse  beneath  which  he  groans;  to  redeem  him 
from  the  perdition  of  despair  in  which  he  is 
plunged ;  and  to  win  him  back  again  to  the  bliss- 
ful felicity  of  peace,  hope  and  love.  What  beau- 
tiful philanthropy  !  How  divinely  charitalile ! 
Generous,  guileless,  matchless,  but  misguided 
Manonia ! 

We  are  told  by  the  highest  authority  ever 
recorded  on  earth,  that  beauty  of  the  daugh- 
ters of  the  most  wicked  and  perverse  men  in  the 
worst  age  of  the  world,  attracted  the  sons  of 
G-od — as  it  would  seem,  under  a  liberal  con- 
struction of  the  testimony — from  even,  perhaps, 
their  stations  in  glory,  or  unquestionably  from 
what  was  much  the  same ;  birth-right  heritages 
to  such  stations,  could  the  allusion  have  been  to 
pien  not  angels.  Can  it  then  be  a  theme  of 
wonder  that  an  earth-born  child  of  Heaven,  en- 
dowed with  all  the  perfectness  of  Beauty's 
charms  and  Grace's  smiles  ever  inherited  by  flesh 


and  blood,  should  win  such  a  sin-stricken  son  of 
Earth  from  his  benighted,  rayless  sphere  so  far 
beneath  her  own? 

Had  it  been  within  the  harmony  of  possibilities 
for  seeds  of  falsehood  to  produce  and  bring  to  per- 
fection pure  fruits  of  truth ;  had  Garland  stood 
forth  under  true  colors,  with  nothing  concealed 
beneath  the  thick  veil  of  his  then  impenetrable 
mask  of  dark  deception ;  and  had  it  been  com- 
patible with  the  hard  decree  of  his  irradicable 
taint  of  wrong  for  him  to  escape  its  stern  penal- 
ties, he  would  have  been  saved  indeed.  And  not 
only  saved,  but  he  would  also  have  been  a  sub- 
stantial blessing  to  the  people  in  the  section  of 
his  adopted  home,  as  well  as  to  Manonia  herself, 
whom  he  would  then  have  been  able  to  render 
permanently  and  supremely  happy. 

When  the  time  for  celebrating  the  nuptials 
is  at  first  deferred  to  Manonia's  decision,  she 
names  Christmas  of  that  year ;  but  when  she  per- 
ceives that.  Garland  is  restless,  and  desires  to 
make  a  business  trip,  and  wait  until  the  new  year 
before  he  concludes  the  co-partnership  with  her 
brother,  she  then  determines  that  they  shall  be 
legally  and  solemnly  united  immediately;  and 
they  are  on  the  first  of  March,  accordingly,  mar- 
ried. Strange  match  !  Unique  incidents  !  Mys- 
terious destiny  ! 

Let  us  pause  a  moment  and  reflect.  Look 
how  slender,  how  frail,  and  how  improbable 
were  the  threads  of  circumstances  that  led  to  this 
unpropitious  union. 

Garland,  so  far  as  that  section  of  country  was 
concerned,  was  passing  through  it  merely  as  an 
aimless  wanderer  ;  prospecting  over  the  survey  of 
a  contemplated  railroad,  with  an  object  to  ascer- 
tain the  most  desirable  points  for  taking  con- 
tracts to  build  bridges.  There  was  no  certainty, 
scarcely  any  probability,  that  he  would  ever  see 
the  work  under  progress,  as  building  the  road  then 
stood,  as  it  long  had  done,  in  apparently  hopeless 
abeyance. 

For  two  miles  before  he  reached  the  Donne  plan- 
tation, he  had  been  looking  for  a  place  to  dine ; 
and  before  turning  aside  to  this  house,  he  stood 
on  a  high  hill  and  looked  two  miles  ahead,  to  see 
if  there  was  not  some  other  promising  habitation 
nearer  to  his  line  of  travel  than  the  one  in  view. 


20i 


MYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


Had  either  object  of  his  seeking  just  named, 
obtained,  his  foot  never  would  have  crossed  the 
tlireshold,  his  form  never  darkened  the  door  of 
the  Doune  mansion,  whence  his  shadow  can 
nevermore  be  dispelled. 

When  he  said  farewell,  and  was  passing  out 
through  the  portal  of  the  gate,  had  no  hailing 
voice  arrested  his  footstep,  he  was  then  gone 
forever. 

On  the  night  of  his  first  conversation  with 
Manonia,  had  not  his  soUloquy  been  an  audible 
exclamation,  he  would  have  passed  from  the 
parlor  without  speaking  to  her ;  and  she  Avould 
then  never  have  heard  his  wild  and  startling 
story,  that  so  deeply  stirred  her  sympathy  and 
awakened  in  her  heart  so  warm  an  interest  in 
the  mysterious  narrator  who  had  suffered  so 
much  keen  and  terrible  affliction. 

But  still,  however,  we  have  yet  seen  that 
neither  of  these  delicately  slender  threads  was 
rent  asunder;  and  that  they  led  to  an  almost 
incredible  result. 

Some  time  following  the  wedding,  the  fact 
transpires  that  after  the  first  week  of  Gai'land"s 
sojourn  at  Donne's,  the  entire  family  decided  that 
this  would  be  a  desirable  result;  and  that  the 
young  lady  had  not  only  been  abundantly  en- 
couraged, but  she  had  been  also  strongly  urged 
to  pursue  the  altogether  extraordinarily  strange 
course  which  she  did,  in  this  singular  afiiiir  of 
love-  and  match-making. 

Throughout  the  entire  current  of  the  negotia- 
tions, she  certainly  acted  her  part  well,  if  not 
wisely —  and  that  her  action  was  extremely 
indiscreet,  no  reasonable  person  will  hesitate  to 
admit. 

Garland  was,  however,  as  will  be  demonstrated 
in  future  chapters  of  this  "  drama  of  life,"  a  man 
of  a  pecuhar  type  and  composition,  and  prepos- 
sessing above  the  average  degree  of  that  quaUty 
inherent  with  mankind,  as  well  as  being  endowed 
with  a  singular  power  of  fascination  that  Avas 
mysteriously  attractive  to  the  few  persons  -\\  ith 
whom  he  was  on  terms  of  moderate  intimacy. 
So  clearly  denned  and  fully  recognized  was  this 
fact,  as  to  dissipate  to  a  large  extent  the  well  mer- 
ited censure,  or  the  ground  for  it,  that  Manonia's 
(■ulpability  appears  to  deserve  ;  except  as  to  the 


precipitation  of  her  course  without  fu-st  ascer- 
taining, from  well  authenticated  and  undoubted 
sources,  who  this  man  w^s,  and  what  was  the 
true  nature  of  his  character.  This  omission  was 
the  fatally  weak  jDoint  in  her  conduct. 

But  for  the  false  nature  of  his  masked  hfe,  al- 
though, in  all  his  days,  the  very  worst  act  of  his 
had  been  recounted  to  her  before  he  dreamed  of 
.so  much  as  enhsting  her  indifferent  esteem,  the 
mask  concealed  no  crimes.  The  worst  feature  of 
his  life  not  revealed  to  her  was  his  assumed  name. 
Still  we  say,  aU  these  things  notwithstanding, 
had  he  only  confessed  all  to  her,  he  would  yet 
have  been  not  wholly  unworthy  of  her  love. 

This,  he  failed  to  do,  and  hence  but  justly  in- 
curred the  worst  imaginable  penalties  of  earthly 
damnation  that  could  possibly  be  inflicted  by  the 
sleepless  and  unpitying  ministers  of  retribution, 
who,  though  often  tardy  about  putting  their 
scourges  of  justice  into  operation,  are  neverthe- 
less infalhble,  and  will,  or  soon  or  late,  make  a  ter- 
rible visitation  witn  lashes  of  most  unmerciful 
chastisement. 

From  this  point  on  to  the  scene  in  which  he 
appears  on  the  stage  in  this  drama  for  the  last 
time,  Garland  is  one  of  the  strongest,  one  of  the 
most  wonderful  and  astonishing  real  characters 
on  the  shady  side  of  hfe's  mysteries  that  we 
have  ever  met,  or  of  whom  we  have  even  read  in 
books  of  unquestionable  authenticity,  yet  not  half 
so  well  vouched  for  as  his  story  shall  be. 

Our  pages  of  charity  for  him  and  his,  ended 
when  he  married  that  beautiful,  pure  and  innocent 
woman,  while  still  wearing  the  mask  of  falsehood ; 
and  therefore  we  shall  be  henceforth  unsparing, 
and  connect  him  directly  with  events  that  will  fully 
and  most  authentically  corroborate  all  the  start- 
ling vicissitudes  of  his  strangely  checkered  career 
faithfully  and  truly  presented  by  us.  All  that  is 
beautiful  and  noble  shall  stand  out  in  bold  relief, 
in  company  with  the  reprehensible,  the  ignoble, 
the  dark  and  the  criminal. 

Immediately  after  the  wedding,  the  co-partner- 
ship between  Garland  and  young  Donn^  is  con- 
summated. 

Up  to  and  until  some  time  after  this  event, 
Garland  is  ignorant  of  the  true  condition  of  the 
business  in  which  he  has  launched.     When  at 


THE  WANDERER'S  PRIZE  IN  THE  LOTTERY  OF  LIFE. 


205 


length,  after  long  and  tedious  work,  he  has  the 
accounts  adjusted  and  the  books  in  a  shape  to 
strike  a  balance,  he  finds  that  an  immense  stock 
of  goods  has  been  purchased  for  one-third  cash, 
and  much  more  than  half  of  this  sold  on  a  credit, 
to  whom,  he,  as  a  matter  of  course,  does  not  know ; 
and  the  entire  amount  of  the  purchase  balances 
remains  unpaid,  to  which  has  been  added  sundry 
orders. 

The  cotton  crop  is  more  than  half  out  of  the 
country.  After  closely  interrogating  his  partner 
and  chief  clerk,  he  ascertains  that  two-thirds  of 
the  sales  on  credit  have  been  made  to  irrespon- 
sible freedmen,  and  a  ride  of  two  days  reveals 
the  startling  fact  that  most  of  them  have  already 
made  way  with  their  crop  and  its  proceeds.  He 
now  informs  his  partner,  his  father-in-law,  and 
his  wife  that  the  firm  is  insolvent;  and  at  the 
same  time  announces  to  Manonia  his  determi- 
nation at  once  to  withdraw. 

The  old  gentleman  is  nearly  frantic,  the  son  in 
despair,  and  Manonia  deeply  distressed  on  their 
account. 

Finally,  all  three  combined,  prevail  upon  Gar- 
land to  remain  in  the  firm,  to  take  the  helm,  and 
to  make  a  desperate  effort  to  save  the  sinking  craft. 
This  necessitates  an  immediate  trip  to  New 
Tork  and  New  Orleans.  Garland  undertakes 
this  trip  with  more  reluctance  than  he  would 
have  experienced  in  making  ready  for  a  battle ; 
but  he  goes. 

Before  starting  he  sets  the  most  vigorous  col- 
lecting machinery  to  work. 

His  trip  proves  a  successful  one,  and  he  returns 
promptly,  notwithstanding  the  prophecy  of  many 
knowing  ones  to  the  contrary. 

The    firm  does  a  good  season's  business,  and 
collects  a  large  per  cent,  of  bad  and  doubtful  debts. 
They  build  a  handsome  residence,  and  G-arland 
and  his  bride  occupy  it. 

Never  did  a  man  work  harder  than  wretched 
G-arland  works  all  day  and  until  midnight,  at 
which  hour  he  leaves  the  office,  to  join  his  wife. 
At  five  o'clock  in  the  morning  he  is  dressed  and 
at  work  at  a  desk  in  the  parlor,  until  breakfast. 
Except  the  hours  of  dining  and  on  Sundays,  this 
is  the  extent  of  the  time  he  spends  in  the  society 
of  his  wife. 


He  reduces  the  price  of  goods  fully  twenty-five 
per  cent.,  and  establishes  a  reliable  local  cotton 
market;  and  is,  therefore,  soon  the  most  pop- 
ular man  in  the  country  with  the  planting  interest, 
and  highly  esteemed  in  the  metropolitan  markets 
of  the  Union. 

It  was  necessary  for  him  to  make  four  business 
trips  each  year. 

The  unpleasantness  connected  with,  and  owing 
to  his  peculiar  position  under  an  assumed  name  in 
the  world,'  inseparable  from  those  business  jour- 
neys and  the  incessant  work  at  home,  arouse  in 
Garland  a  desire  to  abandon  the  business,  which 
is,  in  the  fall  of  his  second  season,  in  excellent 
condition. 

His  wife's  brother-in-law  has  a  fine  and  well- 
stocked  plantation  which  he  desires  to  trade  for 
Garland's  business  interest,  and  Garland  is  eager 
to  secure  the  opportunity  thus  ofi'ered  for  him  to 
escape  from  the  commercial  conflict  to  the  peace- 
ful retirement  of  a  planter's  life. 

The  plantation  is  in  an  out-of-the-way,  semi- 
civihzed  community,  some  fifteen  miles  from  the 
town.  For  this  reason,  Manonia  entreats  him, 
with  tears  streaming  down  her  cheeks,  not  to 
make  the  transfer ;  and  to  her  prayers  he  yields. 

This  same  season  the  corn  crop  proves  a  failure. 
The  immense  fall  and  winter  stock  of  goods  for 
the  firm  from  New  York  is  caught  in  the  river 
by  low  water,  and  delayed  about  three  months — 
a  damaging  misfortune. 

In  the  meantime,  the  price  of  cotton  declines 
so  fearfully  that  it  is  evident  the  firm  will  be 
forced  to  carry  over  large  balances,  as  well  as  to 
advance  corn  to  make  the  next  crop. 

In  view  of  these  facts.  Garland  proceeds,  early 
in  February,  to  the  West,  to  buy  and  ship  the 
corn.  He  finds  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi  rivers 
frozen  tightly  above  Cairo.  At  Cincinnati,  St. 
Louis,  and  Evansville  he  tries  in  vain  to  secure 
tonnage  for  the  first  opening  of  navigation. 

At  last  he  buys  a  steamboat  and  two  barges,  at 
Cairo ;  and  he  here  waits  for  the  ice  to  break  up. 
Nearly  a  month,  however,  elapses  before  the  ves- 
sels are  finally  loaded  in  Indiana. 

The  steamer  runs  aground,  and  there  remains 
for  nearly  two  weeks.     On  the  way  down,  also. 


20G 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


one  of  the  barges  strikes  a  suag,  which  results  in 
its  loss  with  its  cargo. 

After  the  steamer  and  other  barge  are  unloaded, 
they  are  sold  in  New  Orleans  for  nearly  their 
original  cost. 

Garland  borrows  a  large  sum  of  money  in  New 
Orleans,  where  he  is  esteemed  one  among  the 
first  business  men  in  the  State,  and  one  of  the 
best  judges  of  cotton  to  be  found  outside  of  the 
city,  and  would  be  styled  an  expert  even  here. 

He  also  estabhshes  a  branch  housa  in  a  rich 
planting  section,  in  order  to  work  off  the  goods 
carried  over  from  the  past  season.  In  every  pos- 
sible way,  he  makes  the  most  desperate  efforts  this 
season ;  and  in  August,  it  is  the  most  promising 
one  since  the  close  of  the  war. 

In  this  month  he  goes  to  market,  and  buys  a 
very  large  stock  of  goods. 

On  his  return  home,  he  finds  the  worms  eating 
the  cotton.  The  crop  is  cut  short,  and  the  price 
declines  to  an  extent  sufficient  to  demoralize  the 
planters. 

As  if  to  consummate  the  climax  of  misfor- 
tunes, the  small-pox  breaks  out  in  the  country, 
transforming  the  plantations  into  pest  hospitals, 
and  suspending  business  for  about  two  months. 

The  result  is  that  Garland's  firm  cannot  pay 
bills  at  maturity,  and  he  determines  to  go  into 
liquidation.  .  To  this  the  father-in-law  and  part- 
ner strongly  object. 

The  final  issue  is  a  sale  to  the  father-in-law  for 
his  paper,  on  sufficient  time  to  allow  the  firm  to 
recover,  which  paper  the  firm  indorses  to  its 
creditors;  and  as  this  paper  is  strengthened  by 
the  support  of  the  old  gentleman's  valuable  plant- 
ing property,  the  arrangement  is  accepted  by  the 
creditors.  The  assets  of  the  firm  more  than 
double  the  liabihties,  were  they  only  available. 

As  to  the  father-in-law  and  partner,  the  sale  is 
a  sham — a  mere  makeshift  to  gain  time ;  but  with 
Garland,  it  is  bona-fide,  binding,  and  final. 

It  was  covenanted  that  Garland  and  partner 
are  to  run  the  business  for  the  old  gentleman,  as 
salaried  men ;  and  not  long  after,  Garland  is  sent 
to  New  Orleans  to  make  business  arrangements 
for  the  season  for  his  successor.  After  three 
weeks'  assiduous  effort,  he  finds  it  morally  impos- 
sible to  borrow  a  dollar  for  the  new  firm,  or  to 


buy  goods  on  the  usuahy  favorable  terms  tliat  he 
had  always  obtained  them. 

While  in  New  Orleans,  Garland's  best  and  most 
admiring  friend — one  of  the  oldest  and  most  suc- 
cessful cotton  factors  in  the  city — strongly  ad- 
vises him  to  go  immediately  to  the  "Future  City," 
then  about  beginning  to  make  an  effort  toward 
becoming  a  cotton  market,  and  there  engage  in 
the  cotton  commission  trade,  where  he  would 
find  an  ample  field  to  employ  his  fine  talents  and 
extraordinary  capacity. 

On  his  return  he  at  once  announces  his  resolu- 
tion to  follow  the  advice  of  this  New  Orleans 
friend. 

To  Manonia's  protestations  and  entreaties  his 
ear  is  deaf,  and  against  her  tears  his  heart  is  steeled. 
The  only  concession  she  can  obtain,  is  his  prom- 
ise that  she  may  visit  her  parents  as  often  and 
remain  with  them  as  long  as  she  pleases.  Thus  vir- 
tually dies  the  last  sickly  sprig  of  her  fast  with- 
ering happiness,  and  chimes  the  last  cruel  knell 
to  her  hopes. 

Now,  for  the  first  time,  she  beholds  the  seeds 
of  indiscretion  which  she  has  so  haplessly  sown, 
begin  to  germinate.  Poor  child!  she  wiU  see 
their  plants  spring  up  and  flourish  most  luxuri- 
antly with  their  copious  nurturing  from  the 
fountain  of  her  sad  tears,  until  the  day  when  she 
must  eat  their  matured  and  bitter  fruits,  in  dry- 
eyed  and  silent  sorrow. 

Without  any  delay,  Garland  proceeds  to  the 
Future  City,  and  perfects  all  preliminary  arrange- 
ments for  commencing  business  on  July  1st, 
1873. 

The  day  on  which  he  returns  to  his  Louisiana 
home  for  his  wife,  the  vast  store-houses  of  his 
father-in-law  are  one  mass  of  smoldering  ruins ; 
they  have  been  burned  the  previous  night.  Thus 
closely  upon  the  heels  of  each  other,  follow  mis- 
fortune and  disaster. 

In  his  visits  to  cities  where  were  scores  of 
men  who  had  once  known  him  intimately  under 
his  true  name,  this  man  Garland  had,  up  to  the 
day  of  his  location  in  the  "  Future  City  "  never 
been  recognized,  although  he  had  often  met  some 
of  them  in  a  casual  and  informal  manner. 

Time  had  changed  him  wonderfully.  Care  and 
anguish  had  sprinkled  his  hair  with  grey,  and  his 


A  EAILWAY  INCIDENT 


207 


beard  had  become  iieavy;  and  turlhenuorc,  his 
identity  was,  too,  obscured  by  an  artificial  arm 
that  was  so  perfect  an  imitation  of  the  natural 
that  many  persons  with  whom  he  transacted 
business  did  not  know  that  his  arm  was  like  his 
life — false. 

He  is  able  to  locate  as  many  as  twenty  men 
engaged  in  active  business,  in  the  "Future  City," 
who  knew  him  under  his  real  name,  at  the  time 
he  enters  the  list  as  a  merchant  in  that  rising 
metropohs  of  the  Mississippi  valley. 

One  among  the  number  had  been  an  officer  in 
the  same  brigade  with  him  for  nearly  a  year,  up 
to  the  time  when  he  lost  his  arm.  Near  his  new 
domicile  reside  two  own  cousins  from  one  branch 
of  his  family,  and  an  aunt  from  the  other  branch. 

Surely  it  requires  a  desperate  nerve  to  sustain 
a  man  thus  circumstanced  and  situated;  yet  still, 
however  this  may  be,  he  arrives  here,  and  opens 
his  house  on  the  appointed  day,  apparently  with 
indiiferent  fearlessness. 


CHAPTER  LVIII. 


RAILWAY 


N  C  I  D  E  N  T, 


"  In  him  the  painter  labor'd  with  his  skill 
To  hide  deceit  and  give  the  harmless  shew. 

An  humble  gait,  calm  look,  eyes  waiting  still, 
A  brow  unbent,  that  seem'd  to  welcome  woe; 

Cheeks  neither  red  nor  pale,  but  mingled  so 
That  blushing  red  no  guilty  instance  gave. 

Nor  ashy  pale  the  fear  that  false  hearts  have." 

— Shakspeake. 

In  a  palace-car  bound  from  Washington  to 
New  York,  and  fast  approaching  Philadelphia,  be- 
tween the  years  of  1870  and  1873,  one  day,  there 
is  a  little  group  composed  of  Edgar  Harman, 
Jesse  Flowers  and  their  wives. 

A  few  seats  in  front  of  them,  and  on  the  oppo- 
site side  of  the  car,  a  man  with  a  bronged  yet 
fair  face  and  full  auburn  beard,  wearing  a  broad- 
brimmed  Southern  hat,  half  concealing  his  feat- 
ures, occupies  a  seat,  and  seems  to  be  traveling 
alone. 

At  length,  after  closely  scrutinizing  him  for 
some  time,  Edgar  Harman  speaks  to  Mrs.  Flowers 
as  follows :     "  Sissie,  I  beheve  that  is  Col.  Cloud's 


ghost,  sitting  over  yonder.  What  do  you  think 
of  him?" 

Carrie  :  "  I  have  been  watching  him  some  time, 
and  do  not  deem  him  a  ghost  at  all,  but  think 
that  there  sits  Col.  Cloud  liimself,  alive  and  in 
good  health.     Wlnit  think  you,  Jesse?  " 

Flowers :  "I  really  think  that  is  him. ' ' 

Rosalia:  "  Go  and  speak  to  him,  Edgar,  and 
make  sure." 

Harman  steps  over  to  the  man,  and  returns 
in  a  moment  shaking  his  head. 

Edgar  "We  are  mistaken.  I  asked  him  if 
he  was  not  a  Virginian,  when  he  rattled  off:  '  Par- 
donnez  moi,  monsieur,  je  ne  comprend  pas  ce  que 
vous  dit,' — and  he  has  two  good  hands,  which  is 
conclusive,  could  I  have  understood  his  jargon." 

Rosalia:  "Oh !  then  he  is  a  Frenchman,  and  said  : 
'  Pardon  me,  sir,  I  do  not  understand  what  you  say.  ■ " 
Flowers:  "It  is  certainly  a  very  striking- 
resemblance." 

Carrie:  "There  he  goes;  he  stops  at  Phila- 
delphia. Yes,  you  are  right,  Edgar;  we  are  mis- 
taken. He  carries  his  valise  in  the  same  hand 
that  would  be  missing  was  he  Col.  Cloud." 

The  firm  of  Oglethrop,  Harman  &  Co.,  in  New 
York,  continues  to  prosper,  to  grow  in  popularity 
and  tnfluence  as  the  years  ghde  by ;  and  its  mem- 
bers continue  exempt  from  all  family,  all  social, 
all  business  crosses  and  misfortunes. 

The  wives  of  these  gentlemen,  together  with 
Cassandra  and  her  tAvo  erratic  sisters  of  the  con- 
vent, continue  their  good  works  of  charity  and 
mercy. 

With  all  the  parties,  gentlemen  and  ladies,  ex- 
cept the  two  social  exiles,  everything  glides  as 
smoothly,  as  merrily  as  marriage  bells;  and  even 
these  two  unfortunates  are  by  far  more  happy 
than  they  had  ever  been  during  the  days  of  their 
married  wretchedness.  Further  than  this  it  is 
not  within  the  limits  of  our  province  to  deal 
with  the  bright  and  the  happy  phases  of  human 
hfe.  These  brief  and  potent  sketches  suffice  to 
draw  most  impressively  the  lines  and  shades  of 
contrast  between  them  and  their  gloomy  oppo- 
sites,  which  it  is  our  painful  lot  nightly  to  por- 
tray; and  they  furthermore  serve  amply  to 
demonstrate  the  sweet  rewards  for  walking  in 
Duty's  paths,  and  for  heeding  Honor's  voice. 


208 


MYSTIC   KOMANCES   OF   THE  BLUE   AND   THE   GREY. 


CHAPTER    LIX. 

THE    courtesan's    REVENGE. 

"  Misshapen  Time,  cope's  mate  of  ugly  Night, 
Swift,  subtle  post-carrier  of  grizzly  Care; 
Eater  of  youth,  false  slave  to  false  delight. 

Base  watch  of  woes,  siu's  pack-horse,  virtue's  snare, 
O  Time,  thou  tutor  to  both  good  a,nd  bad. 

Teach  me  to  curse  him  that  thou  taught'st  this  ill ! 
At  his  own  shadow  let  the  thief  run  mad, 
Himself,  himself  seek  every  hour  to  kill." 

— Shakspeaee. 

It  Avill  be  remembered  that  Josepha  Del-Cam- 
pano,  the  pitiable  victim  of  Arnold  Noel,  who 
betrayed  her  under  the  nefarious  delusion  of  a 
sham  marriage,  and  then  abandoned  her,  swore  a 
desperate  vengeance  against  the  treacherous  race 
of  mankind,  and  plunged  into  a  reckless  career  of 
crime.  She  did  this  in  order  the  better  to  secure 
opportunities  to  accomplish  her  hate-envenomed 
design,  as  well  as  to  fly  that  atmosphere  of  purity 
which  she  had  once  breathed. 

In  pursuance  of  this  resolution,  she  adopts  the 
life  of  a  courtesan.  She  is  conscious  that  she  is  a 
model  picture  of  perfection,  both  in  physique  and 
form,  besides  being  the  mistress  of  a  rare  and 
most  attractively  fascinating  beaut3^ 

She  plots  to  turn  the  giddy  heads  of  men  occu- 
pying the  first  social  positions  and  abounding  in 
wealth,  by  luring  them  under  the  honor-destroy- 
ing sway  of  her  enchanting  spell,  that  she  may 
then  at  pleasure  wring  alike  their  purses  and  their 
hearts,  and  gloat  over  the  writhing  throes  of  their 
torture  to  the  fullest  satiety. 

In  this,  alas  for  the  weakness  of  mankind  and 
their  susceptibility  to  the  witching  charms  of 
beauty,  though  it  be  reeking  in  the  sulphurous 
odors  of  the  deepest  damnation  of  the  blackest 
social  hell,  she  schemes  not  in  vain. 

We  cannot  pursue  her  wild  career  throughout 
its  many  vicissitudes,  both  because  of  the  want  of 
space  and  of  its  inappropriateness.  We  drag  her 
execrable  shadow  of  a  woman  once  true  and 
pure  but  vilely  betrayed,  on  the  stage  at  all,  be- 
cause this  is  necessary,  in  order  to  present 
in  these  perpetually-shifting  and  ever-varying 
scenes,  in  their  legitimate  colors,   some  of  the 


poisonous  fruits  of  Arnold  Xoel's  evil  deed-, 
springing  as  natural  consequences,  in  strict  ac- 
cordance with  the  laws  of  the  "philosophy  of 
cause  and  effect." 

It  must  suffice  to  say  in  passing,  that  in  the 
earlier  days  of  her  sinful  life,  she  destroyed  the 
peace  and  happines.s  of  more  than  one  family,  and 
drove  more  than  one  victim  to  suicide. 

Later  she  dupes  a  man  of  such  prominence  as 
to  be  esteemed  worthy  the  name  of  "  Magnate." 
to  install  her  in  a  mansion  in  her  own  right  and 
title,  with  palatial  appointments.  Here  the  dig- 
nitaries of  Justice  meet  to  feast,  drink,  and  issue 
restraining  mandamuses  of  injunction  at  their  mid- 
night sessions  in  this  wicked  paramour's  vice- 
gilded  saloon.  She  induces  a  beneficiary  of  the 
"Magnate"  to  waylay  and  .shoot  him  like  a  dog. 
This  case  is  too  notorious  and  well  known  to  re- 
quire comment. 

But  the  story  of  her  crowning  ecstasy  of  re- 
venge yet  remains  to  be  told.  Its  foundation  and 
development  were  due  to  a  circumstance  which 
transpired  Avhile  she  was  yet  the  reigning  evil 
genius  of  the  "Magnate." 

Arnold  Noel  was  living  with  a  notorious  shop- 
lifter as  his  wife.  This  fact  Josepha  learned. 
Then  she  engaged  a  beautiful  and  artful  soiled 
dove  to  fascinate  Arnold.  In  the  meantime,  she 
sought  and  secured  the  acquaintance  of  his  para- 
mour, the  shop-lifter,  and  ingratiated  herself  into 
her  favor  by  buying  her  stolen  goods  at  fancy 
prices. 

In  her  scheme  to  have  Arnold  lured  by  the 
crafty  wiles  of  a  new  siren  she  was  not  disap- 
pointed. This  accomplished,  she  is  not  long  in 
causing  indubitable  evidence  of  the  fact  to  be 
presented  to  the  open  eyes  of  Tilla,  the  shop- 
lifter. That  green-ej^ed  monster — Jealousy — at 
once  seizes  her,  and  drives  her  to  desperate  mad- 
ness. But  she  is  largely  under  the  influence  of 
Joseph^,  who  counsels  moderation.  This  prevails 
the  more  readily,  owing  to  the  strong  out-pour- 
ings of  sympathy  manifested  with  subtle  tact  by 
her  patroness.  This  assures  her,  and  induces  her 
to  admit  Josepha  into  her  confidence.  By  this 
means,  the  relentless  woman  learns  Arnold's  habits 
and  haunts,  together  with  his  true  name  and  the 
residence  of  his  father's  family.     In  the  mean- 


THE  COURTESAN'S  REVENGE. 


209 


time,  Arnold's  new  infatuation  is  also  in  her  con- 
fidence. 

A  wealthy  gncst  of  a  prominent  hotel  is  "spot- 
ted "  through  the  instrumentality  of  Josepha.  It 
is  ascertained  that  a  large  treasure  of  valuables 
is  carelessly  left  about  his  room  on  bureau  and 
tables. 

Between  the  two  rival  women  Arnold  is  re- 
duced to  most  desperate  straits  for  money.  Each 
threatens  to  forsake  him  unless  her  wants  are 
supplied.  The  tempting  bait  of  the  wealthy  hotel 
guest  is  offered  to  him.     Eagerly  he  takes  it. 

Josepha,  as  a  matter  of  course,  has  not  been 
idle.  She  knows  when  the  robbery  is  to  be  com- 
mitted. Due  precautions  are  taken  that  the 
thief  shall  not  leave  the  hotel,  and  that  the  evi- 
dence of  his  guilt  shall  be  complete  and  over- 
whelming.    And  thus  it  proves. 

Arnold  Noel  is  arrested  in  the  hotel,  with  the 
stolen  property  in  his  possession. 

He  is  speedily  "railroaded  "  through  the  courts 
to  conviction,  and  sentenced  to  the  extreme  pen- 
alty of  the  law. 

Now,  Josepha  arranges  the  programme  for  a 
scene.  The  two  rival  women  are  induced  to  be 
at  the  grating  of  the  condemned  Arnold's  cell,  at 
the  same  hour.  Just  after  the  war  of  words  be- 
tween themselves  has  subsided,  and  they  have 
mutually  united  now  to  torture  the  disconsolate 
Arnold  with  reproaches,  Josepha  appears  before 
the  grated  door,  and  gazes  in  triumph  at  the  cow- 
ering destroyer  of  her  youthful  purity  and  its 
dream  of  love.  The  fury  of  the  enraged  honess 
gleams  in  her  eyes,  her  face  is  radiant  with  fiend- 
ish delight,  as  she  says  with  withering  sarcasm 
and  cold-hearted  mockery : 

"Well,  1  hope  you  are  enjoying  yourself. 
Thank  God,— if  I  may  be  permitted  to  pollute 
that  sacred  name  with  my  sin-cursed  lips— conta- 
gion caught  from  your  vile  and  deceptive  kiss,  the 
dread  blight  of  innocent  purity — you  are  at  last 
wedded  to  a  twenty  years'  bride  you  may  not 
leave  to  the  ruthless  caprices  of  another  lover,  as 
you  once  essayed  to  leave  me.  Base  deceiver  I 
Long  have  I  waited  for  this  moment.  Blessed 
day  that  dawned  to  hght  my  way  to  its  raptures  ! 
In  swarms,  I  perceive  your  singed  moths  gather 
around  you  now.    Deluded  wretches !    Not  soon 

14 


again  will  your  treacherous  flame  of  love — ac- 
cursed ingrate ! — glow  to  allure  confiding  virtue 
to  destruction.  May  my  curse  and  its  ever  mul- 
tiplying evils  be  your  curse,  and  that  of  your 
house  and  name !  While  I  live,  it  shall  pursue 
and  afflict  you  and  yours  with  a  pitiless  vengeance 
that  shall  not  abate." 

Arnold  :  "  Have  a  little  pity  for  my  father's 
innocent  family,  if  not  for  me." 

Josepha:  "Pity!  pity!  Ha!  ha!  Yes,  such 
as  you  had  for  me  and  my  father's  innocent  fam- 
ily will  I  have  for  you  and  yours.  Remember 
me !  Mark  my  words !  I  was  your  victim  then : 
you  the  plausible  despoiler.  You  are  my  victim 
now :  I  am  your  heartless  persecutor.  Know, 
Arnold  Noel,  and  bear  with  you  the  consolation 
that  your  present  undoing  is  my  handiwork,  and 
that  I  shall  plan  and  leave  for  you  a  heritage  of 
endless  woe." 

Josepha  brought  into  play  secret  influences  to 
induce  Arnold's  father  to  take  Tilla  into  the 
bosom  of  his  familj^,  as  an  estimable  and  inno- 
cent girl,  the  lawful  wife  of  his  son.  As  soon  as 
she  had  there  won  sympathy,  and  become  a  fa- 
vorite with  the  family  and  its  friends,  she  is  ex- 
posed in  her  true  character.  Then,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  they  are  horrified  at  the  thought  that 
they  have  entertained  a  vile  miscreant  in  the  guise 
of  an  injured  angel. 

Arnold  escapes,  but  is  soon  arrested,  and  re- 
turned to  his  doom,  through  the  connivance  of 
Josepha. 

In  time  he  is  released  by  the  Executive  of  the 
State.  In  a  very  few  months  he  is  returned  to 
his  old  quarters,  for  the  same  term  of  years  as 
those  to  which  he  was  first  doomed.  He  is  the 
victim  of  unanswerable  circumstances,  innocent  of 
the  crime  for  which  he  is  condemned.  Josepha 
deems  his  penalty  a  partial  retribution  for  her 
own  cruel  wrongs. 

During  the  early  months  of  this  second  im- 
prisonment, his  father,  mother  and  two  of  his 
sisters  die,  "the  pitiable  victims  of  broken  heart." 

Josepha's  vow  is  fulfilled :  "  Even  as  thou  hast 
meted  out  unto  me  shame  and  ruin,  so  have  I 
meted  it  out  to  thee  again,  measure  for  measure!'' 


210 


MYSTIC  KOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


CHAPTER  LX. 

IN      THE      FUTURE      CITY. 

"  In  my  school  days  when  I  had  lost  one  shaft, 
I  shot  his  fellow  of  the  self -same  flight 
The  self-same  way,  with  more  advised  watch, 
To  And  the  other  forth:  and,  b^  advent'ring  both, 
I  oft  found  both.   I  urge  this  childhood  proof. 
Because  what  follows  is  pure  Innocence. 
I  owe  you  much  :  and,  like  a  wilful  youth. 
That  which  I  owe  is  lost :  but  if  you  please 
To  shoot  another  arrow  that  self-same  way 
Which  you  did  shoot  the  first,  I  do  not  doubt 
As  I  shall  watch  the  aim :  or  to  find  both 
Or  bring  your  latter  hazard  back  again, 
And  thankfully  rest  debtor  for  the  first." 

— Shakspeake. 

Garland,  Hope  &  Co.  is  Nube  Garland's  firm, 
that  opens  a  house,  July  1st,  1872,  in  the  "  Future 
City,"  as  Cotton  and  General  Southern  Commis- 
sion Merchants. 

In  addition  to  Garland,  the  firm  contains  three 
excellent  young  men  from  the  South,  one  of 
whom  is  to  be  largely  backed  by  his  father 
and  some  relatives  of  means.  As  to  the  other 
two,  it  is  expected  that  a  large  volume  of  busi- 
ness will  be  controlled  through  the  influence  of 
their  relatives  and  friends,  especially  in  the  States 
of  Alabama  and  Mississippi. 

As  stated  in  a  previous  chapter,  between  the 
time  of  Garland's  preliminary  visit  to  the  "  Fu- 
ture City,"  and  his  landing  there  for  the  purpose 
of  permanently  locating,  the  stores  of  his  Loui- 
siana successor  are  burned. 

He  finds  this  event  has  seriously  changed  the 
aspect  of  affairs  relative  to  his  new  enterprise. 
As  soon  as  it  is  known  among  the  creditors  in 
the  "  Future  City,"  they  at  once  feel  a  presenti- 
ment that  they  are  never  to  get  back  all  their 
money. 

In  making  his  preliminary  visit,  Garland  count- 
ed on  the  friendship,  the  countenance,  and  the 
assistance  of  these  same  creditors,  as  the  very 
ground-work  upon  which  he  then  calculated  to 
build  a  commercial  structure.  He  did  not  ex- 
pect to  borrow  money  from  them,  nor  to  have 
their,  indorsement  of  his  paper.  But  he  designed 
to  fill  his  Southern  orders  by  their  aid,  and 
thus  more  than  compensate  them  for  the  loss  of 


his  former  trade  and  the  deferred  payment  of 
the  balances  due  to  them  by  .his  late  firm  in  the 
South,  while  benefiting,  his  new  firm.  He  hoped 
and  believed  this  would  awaken  among  these 
men  a  sincere  interest  in  his  success,  and  induce 
them,  whenever  it  was  practicable,  to  speak  a 
good  word  for  his  house. 

During  that  first  visit,  he  called  on  and  con- 
.sulted  no  other  parties  in  relation  to  his  project ; 
and  with  two  or  three  insignificant  exceptions,  the 
nature  of  the  •  encouragement  he  received  was 
all  that  he  could  possibly  have  desired,  far  more 
flattering  than  he  anticipated. 

When  he  finds  the  stores  of  his  father-in-law 
in  ashes,  he  has  himself  strong  misgivings  con- 
cerning the  firm  being  able  to  cancel  their  <lebts, 
even  if  the  partial  insurance  is  paid  promptly 
and  in  full.  For  he  knows  that  as  soon  as  the 
business  fails  as  a  supply  depot,  seven-tenths  of 
the  customers  never  will  pay  a  dollar;  and  that 
they  are  within  the  pale  of  Homestead-protec- 
tion so  securely  as  to  defy  compulsorj'-  collection. 

On  his  arrival  in  the  "  Future  City,"  therefore, 
he  finds  among  the  creditors,  with  few  and  rare 
exceptions,  a  marked  and  repulsive  coldness.  He 
frankly  tells  them  he  fears  that  he  will  have  to 
pay  part  of  the  money  by  his  own  personal  ex- 
ertions. This  does  not  seem  to  turn  the  current 
any  more  in  his  favor. 

The  idea  that  he  has  a  large  sum  of  money 
from  the  assets  of  his  old  firm,  drawn  out  before 
the  sale  to  his  successor,  becomes  current,  and  is 
thoroughly  beheved  to.be  true  among  the  credit- 
ors in  question. 

Some  of  these  creditors  are  peculiarly  vindic- 
tive. We  can  hardly  reconcile  their  manifesta- 
tions of  this  spirit  with  consistency.  We  might 
with  propriety  name  them,  but  this  is  unneces- 
sary. We  may  indicate  a  few  of  them  by  names 
appropriate  to  their  proneness. 

These  creditors  influenced  other  parties;  and 
still  others  were  drawn  on  their  side,  from 
motives  and  for  reasons  that  will  duly  appear, 
although  their  names  will  not. 

Bright  names,  such  as  soar  high  above  petty 
malice,  speak  never  but  kindly  of  disagreeable 
competitors,  and  disdain  to  be  uncharitable  to  the 
unfortunate,  are  hallowed  lights  that  shine  with 


IN   THE  FUTURE  CITY. 


211 


rarely  approachable  refulgence  among  the  dark 
shadows  of  the  envious,  dissembling,  malicious 
crew.  They  are  most  beautiful  and  radiant  dia- 
monds of  the  purest  water,  that  will  stand  the 
wear  of  time,  cut  all  that  falsehood  and  injustice 
can  hurl  against  them,  and  yet  remain  unihm- 
med.  Hence  it  is  with  a  thrill  of  pleasure  that 
we  image  in  the  sleepless  majesty  of  the  mind 
such  strong  and  matchless  characters  of  perfect 
moral  manhood.  What  an  appalling  contrast  the 
bright  tints  of  the  clear,  brilliant  and  shining- 
lights  reflect,  when  they  penetrate  and  shed  a 
beaming  ray  upon  the  gloomy  back-ground  in  the 
odious  picture  of  the  dark  side  of  life. 

In  this  relation,  we  propose  to  present  a  true 
and  well-authenticated  picture  throughout,  not  in 
defense  of  Nube  G-arland,  nor  to  make  his  un- 
worthiness  appear  more  monstrous,  but  to  demon- 
strate yet  other  shades  of  human  life  requisite  to 
consummate  its  portrait.  We  shall  follow  in  the 
wake  of  occurrences  just  as  they  have  transpired 
and  maybe  thoroughly  substantiated  in  the  com- 
mercial centre  where  located. 

The  opposition  this  man  G-arland  meets  is  de- 
signed to  preclude  him  from  the  possibility  of  per- 
fecting arrangements  that  will  enable  him  to  do 
anything  in  the  direction  of  conducting  a  regular 
business,  or  even  starting  it  on  a  legitimate  and 
practicable  basis. 

One  creditor  of  his  old  firm,  who  might  appro- 
priately be  termed  "  Duplicity,"  professes  much 
solicitude  for  G-arland's  success,  and  specially  de- 
sires to  assist  him  in  making  financial  arrange- 
ments. 

The  assistance  rendered  is  in  the  shape  of  in- 
troducing him  to  the  proper  bank  officers  after 
they  are  privately  admonished  to  have  nothing  to 
do  with  him.  Some  of  the  other  creditors  act  a 
more  honorable  part — that  of  secret  work  without 
the  guise  of  professed  friendship.  It  is  needless 
to  name  them. 

One  modest,  quiet  creditor  deserves  to  be  styled 
the  "  True  Friend. "  While  the  prospect  of  his  losing 
his  large  claim  is  no  less  disagreeable  to  him  than 
to  the  other  a«id  smaller  creditors,  still  he  has  suf- 
ficiently investigated  the  affair  to  be  satisfied  that 
it  is  not  fraudulent.  Hence,  being  a  true,  just 
man,  he  will  not  stoop  to  condemn  and  persecute 


an  unfortunate  debtor  overtaken  by  disasters  that . 
have  sprung  from  unavoidable  causes. 

Garland  soon  finds  that  the  doors  of  all  promi- 
nent and  desirable  banks  are  closed  against  him  ; 
and  that,  alone  and  unaided,  he  must  combat  the 
powerful  and  aggressive  influence  of  his  vindic- 
tive creditors  at  home  and  abroad.  Nothing 
could  well  appear  more  hopeless  and  forlorn  than 
his  now  discouraging  prospects  for  success  in  his 
efibrts  barely  to  start  a  business. 

In  talking  the  matter  over  with  the  "True 
Friend,"  that  wise,  able,  and  successful  merchant 
frankly  informs  Garland  that  his  enterprise  is  a 
fated  impossibility. 

Nevertheless,  whatever  may  be  Garland's  con- 
victions— is  he  capable  of  experiencing  such — he 
does  not  meekly  accept  the  inevitable. 

This  obstinate  efibrt  and  indomitable  persever- 
ance of  his  demonstrates  a  singularly  peculiar  freak 
of  fortune,  partaking  strongly  of  the  nature  of  a 
mysterious  dispensation  from  the  guiding  power 
of  a  strangely  ordered  destiny. 

Similarly  situated,  under  the  same  force  of  cir- 
cumstances, nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  men 
out  of  every  thousand,  although  in  full  enjoyment 
of  untarnished  virtue  and  true  moral  courage, 
would  have  abandoned  an  enterprise  so  wholly 
devoid  of  prospect,  or  hope,  or  probability  of  suc- 
cess. Why,  then,  the  man  Garland  clings  to  it  so 
tenaciously  is,  at  this  time,  when  the  story  of  his 
Antecedents  is  unknown,  a  mystery  to  every  one 
acquainted  with  him  and  his  efforts;  now,  with 
all  the  details  before  us,  it  seems  incredible.  Was 
it  misguided  moral  courage,  erroneous  ingenuity, 
or  what  was  it  ?     We  are  unable  to  answer. 

This  strange  and  mysterious  individual  has 
apparently  no  future  in  life  worth  a  struggle. 
Liable  as  he  is,  as  indorser  for  the  paper  of  his 
unfortunate  Louisiana  successor,  with  the  bitter 
vindictiveness  of  the  holders  of  this  paper  com- 
bined against  him,  there  seems  little  to  encourage 
him  to  start  a  business  as  it  were,  in  the  very 
jaws  of  a  menacing  danger  threatening  him  with 
the  most  merciless  and  crushing  destruction. 
And,  then  again,  he  furthermore  has  the  ghost 
of  his  false  position-  ever  at  his  heels.  Less 
serious  things  drive  men  Avho  are  well  established, 
not  only  out  of  business,  but  to  self-destruction. 


212 


MYSTIC  KOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


Almost  every  day  lie  meets  parties  whom  he 
recognizes,  but  none  of  tliem  seem  to  remember 
him. 

As  a  rule  he  avoids  talking  about  the  past, 
but  when  he  does  speak  of  it,  with  the  one  ex- 
ception of  his  name,  he  confines  himself  to  truth, 
even  to  the  county  of  his  nativit\",  the  regiments 
in  which  he  served,  and  the  rank  of  himself  in 
that  service  from  first  to  last. 

After  finding  the  true  state  of  afi'airs  and  real- 
izing the  precariousness  of  the  difficulties  in  which 
they  involve  him,  he  is  very  cautious  how  he 
naoves,  and  extremely  quiet  in  all  his  operations. 
However,  the  busines.s  community,  to  its  surprise, 
soon  learns  that  he  has  an  account  with  a  small 
new  bank,  and  is  doing  a  large  amount  of  busi- 
ness from  Texas  all  the  way  to  Georgia — far 
more  than  many  old-established  houses,  amount- 
ing frequently  to  thousands  of  dollars  in  one  day 
Avitlr  Memphis  alone. 

When  the  panic  strikes  him,  his  prospects  are 
flattering  indeed.  For  a  new  and  not  strong 
house,  he  has  a  large  amount  of  exchange  re- 
mitted from  Memphis,  drawn  by  the  best  bank 
there,"  on  New  York,  to  come  back  dishonored — 
the  Memphis  bank  having  failed  while  the  bills 
were  in  traiisit  as  remittance.  Besides  this,  two 
or  three  Memphis  firms  owing  him  large  amounts 
fail,  and  others  are  in  consequence  of  the  finan- 
cial lock-up,  unable  to  meet  their  bills  promptly 
for  purchases  in  transit  at  the  commencement 
of  the  panic. 

Just  now  it  appears  that  Garland  is  effectually 
crushed.  The  expectations  of  assistance  from 
the  friends  of  his  partners  totally  fail.  Not  a  dol- 
lar nor  business  worth  a  dollar,  ever  reaches  the 
firm. 

But  dark  as  all  seems.  Garland  does  not  de- 
spair. In  a  very  short  time  the  Memphis  bank 
arranges  to  start  again,  and  he  is  able  to  get  the 
paper  of  the  bank  discounted. 

Before  *the  banks  resume  currency  payment, 
there  is  a  distressing  demand  for  cash  to  pay 
cotton-pickers  in  the  South.  Garland's  keen  and 
ever  alert  acumen  perceives  that  this  circumstance 
constitutes  the  strategical  point  of  the  cotton 
campaign,  and  the  foundation  for  the  future  of 
the  trade  in  the  "  Future  City." 


His  little  bank  does  not  belong  to  the  Clearing 
House  Association,  and  never  stops  paying  cur- 
rency. He  therefore  draws  all  the  money  he 
can  obtain,  and  sends  three  good  men  to  the  most 
promising  cotton  districts,  with  instructions  to 
secure  consignments  with  the  least  possible  spot 
cash  advances,  to  take  ojxlers  for  goods  of  any 
class  against  the  cotton  up  to  a  full  advance,  or 
to  promise  the  balance  of  a  full  advance  in  cur- 
rency, by  express,  on  the  arrival  of  the  cotton  in 
his  market. 

The  result  of  this  adventure  is  immediate  and 
surprisingly  large  shipments  of  cotton,  that  daily 
increase.  And  as  this  novel  genius  makes  a 
new  departure  in  the  commission  business  by 
proposing  to  buy  goods  for  Iris  shippers  free  of  com- 
mission, his  orders  for  goods  are  nearly  as  large 
as  those  of  any  wholesale  grocery  house  in  the 
Southern  trade.  This  feature  creates  for  him 
the  uncompromising  enmity  of  one  grocery  firm 
doing  an  immense  Southern  business. 

Up  to  the  season  when  Garland's  house  enters 
the  field,  this  city  has  never  been  a  cotton  mar- 
ket, and  there  is  only  one  legitimate  cotton  com- 

inission   house  here,    S &  Co.,  the  pioneer 

house  of  the  trade  in  this  city, — a  firm  whose 
members  are  always  and  under  all  circumstances 
warm  and  earnest  friends  to  Garland,  and  who 
will  not  permit  agents  to  talk  against  him  nor 
to  his  detriment.  Both  members  of  this  firm 
ever  encourage  him.  They  understand  and  ap- 
preciate how  vastly  he  will  aid  them  to  establish 
a  market  in  their  city,  and  to  draw  a  large  vol- 
ume of  shipments  to  it — a  result  for  which  they 
have  labored  many  years  in  the  face  of  the  ante- 
diluvian jeers  and  discouragements  from  the 
very  men  whose  interests  should  have  prompted 
them  to  encourage  and  assist  this  commercial 
life-inspiring  enterprise. 

This  firm  does  not  despise  Garland's  unques- 
tionable talents  and  undoubtedly  fine  knowledge 
of,  and  thorough  experience  in,  this  important 
business,  nor  hesitate  to  pattern  after  him  where 
tangible  success  is  crowning  his  every  effort.  This 
house  is  strong,  and  at  once  adopts  the  plan  of 
sending  out  men  with  money,  and  thus  to  meet 
success  in  a  degree  commensurate  with  the  greater 


IN  THE  FUTUKE  CITY. 


213 


magnitude   of  tlieir  resources  that  Garland  has 
reahzed. 

Several  otlier  firms  this  season  launch  out  in 
the  cotton  business.  All  are  soon  inspired  to 
make  the  same  effort.  Within  sixty  days  this 
city  is  a  cotton  market ;  a  fixed  fact. 

In  the  meantime,  F &  Co.,  pork-packers, 

F &  B ,  flour  merchants,  and  W & 

K ,  wholesale   grocers,  extend   extraordinary 

facilities  to    Garland,  and  are   friends,  if  not  to 
him  personally,  certainly  to  his  enterprise.     It  is 

also  about  this  time  that  George  M ,  then  in 

the  fancy-goods  trade,  and  J.  W.  P. presi- 
dent of  the  Cotton  Compress  Co.,  become  friends 
with  and  begin  to  take  a  hvely  interest  in  Garland. 
Up  to  this  period  in  his  metropohtan  career,  he 
is  a  grand,  courageous,  and  admirable  character — a 
model  worthy  of  emulation  in  every  respect,  save 
alone  his  false  position,  but  for  which  we  now 
see  him  on  the  high  road  to  a  pinnacle  of  unparal- 
leled success,  influence,  power,  and  usefulness, 
in  comparison  with  the  circumstances  under  which 
he  started,  and  the  nature  of  the  line  of  business 
in  which  he  is  engaged. 

But,  alas!  the  long  treasured  and  ever  accumu- 
lating retribution  of  that  atoneless  curse  still  re- 
mains unspent.  Can  any  mortal  skill,  ingenuity^ 
exertion,  will  or  power,  or  all  combined,  redeem 
and  spare  him  from  its  ultimate  consequences? 
Or  will  these  masterful  struggles  to  escape,  only 
tend  to  delude  and  to  lead  him  into  the  entangle- 
ments of  its  treacherous  snare  ? 

This  should  be  an  interesting  and  an  instructive 
study :  whether  it  be  possible  for  a  man  wholly  to 
escape  in  this  world  the  real  palpable  penalty^ 
either  in  a  greater  or  a  less  degree,  that  his  false 
or  criminal  acts  merit  and  demand. 

Here  is  a  man  with  the  talent,  the  skill,  the 
strategy,  the  nerve,  the  daring  requisite  to  ac- 
complish anything  human  in  a  strife  with  events 
controlled  and  directed  only  by  human  dispen- 
sation. But  what  will  all  these  avail  him  in  a 
conflict  with  the  silent  and  mystical  powers  of  an 
unknown  and  invisible  destiny  ?  We  are  driven 
to  the  unwavering  conclusion  that  he  is  helpless, 
bhnd,  and  cannot  escape. 

What  a  lamentable  thralldom  for  a  man  to  be 
involved  in — a  man  capable  of  rendering  to  the 


future  prosperity  of  the  city  such  extensively 
valuable  commercial  services  in  promoting  an 
enterprise  upon  which  depends,  in  an  inestimable 
degree,  the  approaching,  or  at  least  the  feasible, 
greatness  of  the  city ;  an  enterprise  to  which  he 
is  as  zealously  devoted  as  any  man  engaged  in  it 
who  is  free  and  untrammeled  from  the  detrimental 
embarrassment  of  perpetually  existing  under  the 
sombre  gloom  of  a  menacing  cloud ! 

How  can  and  why  will  an  unworthy  man  de- 
vote, as  it  were,  his  very  life  in  a  laudable  struggle 
to  advance  the  interest  of  a  community,  actuated 
entirely  by  worthy  motives  ?  It  is  impossible  for 
this  man  to  reap  a  benefit  from  his  assiduous 
labors  that  will  not,  and  immediately,  advance  the 
general  welfare  of  the  community  ten  times  as 
much  as  that  to  be  realized  for  himself.  Ewry 
step  he  makes  in  the  direction  of  extending  the 
infant  trade  at  this  period  of  its  delicate  exist- 
ence, is  planting  a  seed  that  will  spring  up  and 
bear  permanent  and  increasing  fruit.  This  will 
continue  to  enhance  the  prosperity  of  commerce 
for  all  time,  no  matter  what  may  be  his  fate  as  an 
individual  actor. 

A  most  trivial  but  potent  incident  trahspires 
early  in  the  season  under  consideration,  that 
makes  an  uncompromising  enemy  for  Garland  of 
a  strong,  new  cotton  house.  This  firm  seems  to 
entertain  the  idea  that  all  the  business  from  one 
section  is  its  own  by  an  inaUenable  right;  and 
thus  it  develops. 

Garland  has  an  agent  passing  through  that  sec- 
tion one  day,  on  a  mail-train  that  stops  at  a  depot 
for  a  freight  to  come  up.  This  agent  steps  off, 
and  hands  a  card  to  each  of  a  few  planters  who 
are  standing  on  the  platform,  but  has  no  time  to 
talk.  This  results  in  one  of  the  leading  planters 
dividing  a  forty  bale  shipment,  the  next  day, 
equally  between  the  two  houses.  The  day  on 
which  the  cotton  arrives,  Garland's  competitor, 
who  is  young  in  the  business,  and  at  this  time 
utterly  ignorant  of  the  classification  and  grade 
valuation  of  cotton  to  that  fine  degree  of  techni- 
cal nicety  requisite  to  afford  him  absolute  security 
against  being  "picked  up"  by  a  sharp  broker, 
makes  a  very  large  sale,  in  which  the  twenty  bales 
referred  to  are  included.  There  is  some  extra 
delay  about  delivering  the  cotton,  and  more  about 


214 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


getting  the  sales  made  up  and  remitted,  while,  in 
the  meantime,  the  market  becomes  active,  buo}^- 
ant  and  advancing.  Neither  one  of  the  parties 
knows  of  the  shipment  to  the  other.  G-arland  is 
ignorant  of  the  circumstances  under  which  the 
shipment  has  been  made  to  his  house,  as  well 
as  of  tlie  fact  that  the  shipper  is  a  customer  of 
his  competitor. 

Garland  is  a  classer  of  cotton  equal  to  any  in 
any  market,  and  thoroughly  skilled  in  both  the 
New  Orleans  and  New  York  methods  of  conduct- 
ing a  cotton  commission  business  under  the  most 
approved,  the  most  practical,  and  most  scientific 
rules. 

One  of  the  first  principles  is,  rigidly  to  class 
every  bale  in  a  list,  and  thus  ascertain  its  exact 
average  value  before  offering  it  for  sale ;  the  next 
is  to  mail  to  each  shipper  a  notification  of  the 
number  of  bales  he  has  in  the  list,  the  same  day 
it  is  sold  ;  and  next  to  make  up  and  forward  the 
sales  promptly. 

G-arland  sells  the  twenty  bales  about  a  week 
after  he  receives  them,  on  an  advanced  and  ex- 
cited market ;  so  that  they  net  over  twelve  dol- 
lars per  bale  more  than  the  twenty  sold  by  his 
competitor.  This  brings  him  a  large  per  cent,  of 
business  from  that  section;  and  his  competitor 
believes  it  is  the  result  of  sinister  unfairness, 
while,  in  reaUty,  Garland  is  himself  ignorant  of 
the  cause.  Circumstances  very  nearly  similar  to 
the  one  just  related,  made  for  Garland  a  number 
of  other,  but  less  important  enemies. 

It  is  a  little  remarkable  that  his  emphatic  injunc- 
tion to  all  his  soliciting  representatives  is,  never 
to  say  a  word,  and  that  he  never  writes  a  line 
detrimental  to  any  other  house;  nor  seeks,  l)y 
any  unfair  means,  to  take  business  away  from 
any  one,  up  to  the  point  in  his  career  now  under 
consideration. 

As  to  poor  Manonia,  she  is  literally  buried  alive 
in  a  hotel,  and  quite  ill — almost  past  hope.  Gar- 
land returns  to  her  from  his  office  at  midnight, 
and  leaves  her  at  six  o'clock  in  the  morning.  But 
personally,  he  is  as  kind  to  her  as  any  man  in  the 
world  could  be,  never  giving  her  an  angry  word ; 
and  she  loves  him  with  all  the  passionate  devoted- 
ness  of  her  ardent  Southern  nature. 


Just  as  soon  as  she  is  able  to  travel,  she  sets 
out  to  pay  her  first  visit  to  her  parents,  leaving 
Garland  subject  to  the  baneful  influence  of  his 
own  dark  mind. 

Before  leaving,  she  consummates  an  act  of 
beautiful  charity,  that  is  productive  of  much  good 
fruit.  This  act  is  accomplished  through  the  me- 
dium of  the  following  conversation  : 

Manonia  :  "  My  dear,  have  you  ever  noticed 
the  boy,  little  Frank,  who  takes  the  meal-tickets 
at  the  dining-room  door?" 

Garland:  "  Yes,  casually,  in  passing.  What 
of  him  ?  " 

Manonia:  "He  is  a  very  bright,  sweet  child; 
and  he  has  been  very  kind  to  me,  and  cheered 
me  during  many  an  hour  that  would  have  hung 
monotonous  and  dreary  on  my  hands.  He  has  a 
widowed  mother,  and  they  are  very  destitute.  I 
want  you  to  do  something  for  him  for  my  sake."' 

Garland:  "Certainly.  How  much  shall  I  give 
him  ?  " 

Manonia  :  "  Oh !  I  don't  mean  that.  I  want  you 
to  take  him  into  your  office,  and  pay  him  what- 
ever he  is  worth." 

Garland  :  "  I  would  rather  pension  him  oft' 
than  be  bothered  with  him.  Those  hotel  boys 
learn  nothing  but  badness,  and  he  would  prove  an 
intolerable  nuisance  in  the  office." 

Manonia:  "Now,  don't  say  that,  please,  about 
him,  for  he  is  an  exception.  He  begged  me  to 
ask  you.  His  father  was  once  a  wealthy  cotton 
merchant;  but  left  his  wife  and  boy  beggars, 
owing  to  people  having  swindled  him.  during  a 
long  illness  before  he  died.  The  poor  little  fellow 
wants  to  learn  the  business.  Take  him,  please. 
It  might  be  the  means  of  making  a  useful  man  of 
him,  and  of  saving  him  from  drifting  down  with 
the  muddy  tide  in  the  maelstrom  of  the  scum  and 
dregs  of  life.  If  he  gives  j^ou  the  least  annoyance, 
blame  me,  but  don't  scold  him." 

Garland:  "All  right,  then;  I  will  give  him  a 
fair  trial." 

Manonia  :  "  How  good  you  are !  How  pleased 
he  will  be." 

The   second   month,  Garland  pays   this   boy 

Frank   G.    P. ,    fifty   dollars,    solely   on    the 

score  of  merit.  From  that  time,  his  destiny  is 
established,  and  he  steadily  rises.    He  is  a  mimick- 


THE  MUTUAL  AND  SECEET  INQUISITOKIAL  LEAGUE. 


215 


ing  genius,  that  never  has  to  be  told  or  shown 
how  to  do  anything  the  second  time,  in  order  to 
understand  it  perfectly. 

His  mother,  a  dehcate  little  woman,  he  very 
soon  transfers  from  the  garret  and  squahd  pov- 
erty to  plenty  and  comfort. 

At  the  present  day,  there  are-few  men  as  well 
recompensed  for  their  services  as  is  this  young 
man. 


CHAPTER  LXI. 

THE   MUTUAL  AND   SECRET    INQUISITORIAL   LEAGUE. 

"  Yet  I  must  think  less  wildly;—!  have  thought 
Too  long  aud  darkly,  till  my  brain  became 
In  its  own  eddy  boiling  and  o'erwrought ; 
A  whirling  gulf  of  phantasy  and  flame; 
And  thus  untaught  in  youth  my  heart  to  tame, 
My  springs  of  life  were  passion.    'Tis  too  late !  " 
— BYKON. 

Early  in  the  winter  of  1873-4,  associated  with 
six  other  merchants,  Garland  is  a  member  of  a 
society  or  league  of  seven,  organized  to  ascertain 
the  moral  habits  principally  of  men  in  their  OAvn 
employ,  and  those  with  whom  they  are  most  in- 
timately related  in  business.  After  this  para- 
mount object  is  attained,  they  gather  any  other 
subordinate  information  that  either  the  fancy  or 
the  whims  of  any  two  of  the  members  may 
prompt  them  to  demand.  Especially  is  it  stipu- 
lated that  any  member  on  duty  seeking  informa- 
tion of  any  specific  nature  shall  report  to  the 
meetings  any  other  striking  information  that  may 
casually  chance  to  come  under  his  observation. 

The  members  of  this  novel  commercial  associa- 
tion are  all  older  men  than  Garland,  and  all  but 
he  are  well  established  and  substantial  merchants 
of  the  most  rigid  moral  school  Some  of  them 
are  deemed  a  little  eccentric. 

One  of  them  with  whom  Garland  is  intimate, 
one  evening  suggested  the  utihty  of  a  compact  of 
this  nature  to  Garland  and  two  others,  in  the  pri- 
vate office  of  one  of  their  number.  The  plan  is 
at  once  agreed  upon,  and  three  other  parties  then 
named  who  would  be  acceptable  as  members. 
These  last  mentioned  merchants  are  consulted, 
and  the  next  night  the  league  is  organized. 

Every  member  is  sworn  to  observe  a  super- 


Masonic  secrecy  as  to  the  existence  of  the  organ- 
ization, its  objects,  its  workings ;  and  never  to 
expose  to  the  pubhc  any  information  gathered  by 
its  numbers  that  might  prove  damaging  in  the 
shghtest  degree,  unless  the  interests  of  some  one 
of  their  members  imperatively  demand  it.  In 
case  of  any  member  being  referred  to  by  the 
party  whom  such  knowledge  would  affect,  he 
may  then  impart  it  without  specially  indicating 
the  source  whence  it  is  derived,  as  he  would  in 
strict  confidence  give  any  other  commercial  in- 
formation. They  are  not  to  seek  information  for 
the  benefit  of  any  other  parties  than  the  members 
themselves. 

Any  member  guilty  of  disreputable  commercial 
conduct  is  to  be  expelled. 

No  new  members  are  ever  to  be  admitted. 
One  member  is  to  be  on  duty  every  night,  so 
that  the  turn  of  each  will  occur  but  once  a  week. 
The  duties  of  this  member,  when  no  special 
nor  extraordinary  instructions  are  imposed  upon 
him,  are  to  shadow  drinking,  gambhng  and  other 
disreputable  resorts,  and  there  watch  for  the  em- 
ployes, etc.,  of  himself  and  brother  members. 
While  thus  engaged,  it  is  but  a  natural  presump- 
tion that  the  member  on  duty  will  find  other 
people  than  those  for  whom  he  is  looking,  occa- 
sionally straying  in  devious  paths.  Such  instances 
as' these,  if  of  notable  importance,  it  is  expected 
he  will  report  at  the  meeting  held  the  week  in 
which  the  information  comes  into  his  possession. 
It  is  agreed  that  immediately  after  the  adjourn- 
ment of  each  meeting,  every  member  shall  call  to 
account  such  of  his  people  as  have  come  under 
the  ban  of  the  inquisition's  proscribed  list,  and 
privately  inform  them  separately  the  exact  na- 
ture of  the  damaging  discoveries,  give  them  all 
one  chance;  but  at  the  same  time  duly  notify 
them  that  a  repetition  will  not  be  excused. 

The  members  of  this  strange  fraternity  deter- 
mine to  test  the  secret  workings  of  family  gro- 
cery-stores, in  localities  where  the  laboring  poor 
reside  and  deal.  To  this  end,  they  make  up  a 
little  purse,  purchase  a  diminutive  pair  of  post- 
office  scales,  and  place  these,  together  with  a  part 
of  the  fund,  each  night,  in  the  hands  of  the  mem- 
ber on  duty,  with  instructions  to  send  some 
colored  person  or  small  poor  child  to  buy  some 


216 


MYSTIC   EOMANCES   OF   THE  BLUE  AND  THE   GREY. 


articles  sold  by  weight  from  a  few  different  stores 
doing  a  fairly  large  trade,  and  to  weigh  them 
promptly,  at  the  same  time  carefully  noting  the 
purported  weight  of  the  seller  and  the  weight  by 
the  delicate  scales  opposite  each  item,  observing 
to  keep  each  store's  list  distinctly  separate  from 
the  others.  The  plan  is  to  accumulate  a  com- 
bined result,  including  one  hundred  stores  scat- 
tered all  over  the  city,  from  which  they  design 
to  make  an  average. 

Howsoever  trivial  and  insignificant  this  enter- 
prise may  appear  at  the  first  casual  and  hasty  in- 
spection and  consideration,  it  is  simply  wonder- 
ful— almost  incredible — what  a  vast  and  strangely 
varied  amount  of  important  information  a  similar 
organization  may  accumulate,  in  the  brief  space 
of  but  one  week,  in  any  city  of  ten  thousand  in- 
habitants, or  in  any  manufacturing  establishment 
employing  one  thousand  people. 

We  allow  this  chapter  to  cover  the  space  of 
some  pages,  not  only  because  one  of  our  way- 
ward charactei-s  is  directly  connected  with  its 
subject-matter,  but  also  because  it  reflects  a  shade 
of  a  peculiar  hue  that  does  not  obtain  in  the  com- 
position of  the  colors  furnished  by  our  regular 
characters,  without  which  a  true  life-picture  would 
be  falsely  incomplete  ;  and  furthermore,  because 
they  are  of  a  nature,  at  least  to  a  large  extent, 
that  may  not  easily  be  obtained  by  other  means, 
the  immunity  of  the  transgressors  from  detection 
and  exposure  being  comparatively  well  assured. 

This  is  a  process  that  will  unmask  one  species 
of  unblushing  crime,  that  of  the  bold  and  auda- 
cious theft  and  robbery  that  exceeds  all  other 
methods  of  criminally  obtaining  possession  of 
property,  for  which  the  perpetrators  are  rarely 
or  never  legally  punished,  and  seldom,  if  ever, 
personally  rebuked  by  the  organs  of  the  public. 
These  the  transgressors  usually  disarm  by  lavishly 
liberal  patronage ;  and  by  being  charitable  and 
loudly  profuse  in  their  donations  to  the  church, 
they  most  easily  dispel  from  themselves  all  sus- 
picion of  their  outrageous  and  basely  glaring 
dishonesty. 

What  is  more  atrocious  and  criminal  than,  day 
by  day  throughout  the  year,  again  and  again,^ 
systematically  to  steal  a  portion  of  the  scanty, 
meagre,  hard-earned    subsistence  from  the  toil- 


worn,  poverty-stricken,  drudgerj^-enslaved  man 
and  his  emaciated  children  in  the  pinching 
wretchedness  of  the  squahd  garret?  Why 
should  this  loathsome  depredator,  who  flourishes 
and  revels  in  luxury,  honored  and  esteemed  in 
every  community  in  the  large  towns  and  in  the 
great  cities,  not  be  held  as  accountable,  and  pun- 
ished with  a  proportionately  severe  penalty,  as 
the  hungry  urchin  who  steals  a  loaf  of  bread  ? 

The  time  for  the  first  meeting  arrives,  to  find 
every  member  of  this  organization  promptly  on 
hand  and  ready  to  report. 

President:  "Gentlemen,  we  have  met  in  pur- 
suance to  the  resolutions  adopted  at  our  pre- 
liminary meeting,  and  for  the  purpose  then  indi- 
cated. The  secretary  will  read  the  reports  of  the 
members  for  the  week,  which  will  be  disposed 
of  as  the  meeting  may  deem  proper." 

Secretary:  "Now,  gentlemen,  give  me  your 
attention,  if  j^ou  please,  and  I  will  proceed  to 
read  the  reports  as  they  have  been  submitted 
for  your  information : 

"  '  January  4th,  1874. 

"'To  President  M.  S.  I.  League: 

"'I  have  the  honor  to  report  that  I 
found  Mr.  Low's  book-keeper  playing  faro  and 
losing  money.  He  was  also  drinking  freely,  and 
presented  a  general  appearance  of  recklessness. 

"  '  Mr.  Still's  cashier  and  Mr.  Waterman's  in- 
voice clerk  were  two-parts  drunk,  and  making 
the  rounds  of  saloons  and  other  disorderly  houses, 
and,  at  the  same  time,  conducting  themselves  in 
a  manner  quite  ungentlemanly. 

"'Mr.  Thorn's  collection  clerk  and  Mr.  Mundy's 
stockman  were  dancing  and  treating  in  a  saloon 
on  C avenue. 

"  '  Two  of  Mr.  Garland's  account-sales  clerks 
and  two  of  my  salesmen  .were  full  of  beer,  and 
drinking  at  the  rate  of  about  a  glass  eveiy  five 
minutes. 

"  '  I  observed  a  number  of  leading  bank  men 
and  merchants,  and  the  employes  of  like  insti 
tutions  and  houses  gambling,  drinking  to  excess, 
or  in  company  of  questionable  repute.  And,  I 
am  pained  to  have  to  report  that  I  saw  a  number 
of  couples  from  good,  respectable  society,  going 


THE  MUTUAL  AND  SECRET  INQUISITORIAL  LEAGUE. 


217 


in  the  direction  of  and  coming  from  places  of 
doubtlessly  bad  character. 

"  '  I  was  horrified  to  see  a  dear  friend  of  mine 
with   the  wife  of  another  acquaintance  of  mine, 

enter  a  well  known  resort  near  N and  0 

streets;  then  a  few  minutes  later  his  wife  with 
another  man  gUded  into  the  same  place;  and, 
soon  after,  his  daughter  followed  with  a  bank 
cashier  who  has  a  wife  and  grown-up  children. 

"  '  I  am  exceedingly  thankful  that  our  regula- 
tions do  not  require  us  to  report  the  names  of 
people  outside  of  our  own  business  relations. 
" '  Respectfully  submitted, 

"  '  Timothy  Fair.'  " 

As  the  other  reports  are  of  much  the  same 
tenor  and  purport  we  exclude  them,  except  the 
consolidated  reports  on  the  one  hundred  stores, 
which  result  as  follows  : 

UHt  of  the  entire  number,  seventeen  gave  full 
weight  on  every  item,  and  eighty-three  short 
weight,  ranging  from  twenty  to  forty  per  cent., 
and  averaging  twenty-seven  per  cent.,  including 
the  weight  of  the  heavy  paper  in  which  the  small 
parcels  are  wrapped. 

There  is  a  panic  among  the  employes  of  the 
seven  houses  represented  in  this  secret  league, 
and  their  names  very  soon  cease  to  figure  in  the 
weekly  reports. 

This  brief  reference  to  a  deplorable  and  serious 
subject  but  vaguely  reflects  a  faint  ray  of  hght 
on  the  shady  side  of  hfe,  under  the  mantle  of 
which  a  sadly  large  per  cent,  from  the  middle 
and  upper  ranks  of  society  might,  at  any  time,  be 
found  lurking. 

There  is  but  one  feature  of  it  all,  however,  with 
which  the  laws  of  the  land  and  the  authorities 
constituted  under  them  may  successfully  cope : 
this  systematic,  commercial  pilfering  from  the 
confiding  pubUc,  thus  Easily  duped.  '  Open,  loud 
exposure  of,  and  vigorously  severe  punishment 
inflicted  on  some  of  that  cormorantic  crew  might 
have  a  most  salutary  influence  over  them  all; 
though  with  none  of  the  others  will  emblazoned 
scandal  operate  either  as  a  remedial  or  a  mitiga- 
ting influence. 

Each  particular  feature  is  a  distinctly  and  well- 
defined  type  of  social  pestilence  that  baffles  the 


skill  of  all  moral  and  social  physicians,  and  defies 
their  antidotes — maladies  that  exposure  rather 
tends  to  aggravate  than  to  abate — but  that  the  fear 
of  public  notoriety  will  often  check,  sometimes 
cure. 

Society,  collectively,  controls,  or  rather  might 
control,  the  only  infallible  remedy  in  existence, 
or  the  one  that  might  under  any  earthly  possi- 
bility exist. 

A  few  discreet  and  honoraljle  members  of  soci- 
ety in  any  community  may,  in  a  very  short  time, 
discover  the  members  of  that  society  who  are 
leading  hves  such  as  should  ever  render  them  un- 
worthy the  esteem  of  the  circle  in  which  they 
move,  or  even  tending  in  that  direction.  This 
accomplished,  then  quietly  inform  the  wayward 
ones  of  the  true  nature  of  the  situation;  and  that 
the  alternative  is  to  mend  these  erratic  propen- 
sities or  suff'er  the  consequences  of  exposure — the 
pain  of  banishment  from  the  pure  atmosphere  of 
their  forfeited  sphere  down  to  the  level  of  that 
plane  to  which  they  properly  belong  by  reason 
of  having  adopted  the  abominations  there  prac- 
ticed. This  might  save  more,  both  as  a  preven- 
tive and  as  a  remedy,  than  all  the  "Temper- 
ance Crusades,"  "  Police  Courts,"  "  Workhouses," 
and  "Reformatories"  in  the  world,  combined 
and  multiplied  over  again,  have  ever  saved  or 
ever  will  save. 

The  time  for  society  to  effect  the  reformation 
of  its  viciously  predisposed  members,  is  before 
they  have  lost  their  caste  and  standing;  and  alone 
by  the  gently  soothing  balm  of  its  own  quiet  and 
charming  influence  may  this  result  be  attained ; 
but  never,  or  at  most,  extremely  rare  will  be  the 
exceptional  cases,  through  the  interposition  of  the 
customary  mediums  of  coersive  agencies,  which 
rather  tend  to  make  and  help  along  than  to  cure 
their  malignant  disorders. 

These  are  stubborn,  irrefutal3le  facts  that  the 
sooner  the  philanthropist  recognizes  in  their  true 
light,  the  better  by  far  it  will  be  for  the  nobly 
grand  cause  in  which  he  is  engaged,  and  in  which 
it  is  a  lamentable  misfortune  that  a  mistaken  zeal 
should  often  lead  him  astray. 
,  The  proverb :  "  The  school  of  experience  is  a  hard 
one,"  contains  often  "more  truth  than  poetry." 
A  thousand-fold  more  forcible  is  its  apphcation 


218 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


•\vlien  the  subject-matter'  of  its  lesson  thus  in- 
culcated is  contained  only  in  the  dark  chapters 
of  the  book  of  "  Human  Nature."  But  good 
people,  in  order  to  learn  this  ignoble  lesson  truly, 
that  knowledge  must  be  drained,  with  the  cruel 
dregs,  from  the  melancholy  depths  of  the  most 
bitter  experience. 

One  of  the  principles  of  this  organization  of 
seven  is  that  its  members  shall  be  true  to  one 
another;  and  that  one  member  may  imjiart  to 
another  at  any  time,  either  in  or  out  of  the  regu- 
lar meetings,  any  information  of  whatever  nature, 
whether  obtained  on  or  off  duty,  that  personally 
concerns  only  himself,  and  does  not  in  any  way 
relate  to  other  members,  nor  to  the  chief  objects 
for  which  they  all  are  together  combined. 

It  is  a  startling  observation — the  almost  in- 
credible rapidity  with  wliich  the  information  col- 
lected by  this  league  accumulated,  and  what  a 
strangely  curious  volume  of  the  dark  mysteries  of 
life  grew  weekly  within  the  Uds  of  the  minutes 
of  its  meeting.s. 

The  index  clues  that  point  toward  the  catas- 
trophe to  which  great  institutions  and  houses  are 
rushing  with  swift  impetuosity,  are  there  record- 
ed ;  and  witliin  this  hidden  volume  lay  concealed 
from  the  light  of  day  the  leading  outline  of  the 
dark  mysteries  of  "  the  great  Whisky  Ring,"  in 
sul:)stance  about  the  same  as  that  which  ultimately 
exploded  the  seductive  spell  of  its  potent  sway. 

One  day,  on  the  Cotton  Exchange,  Mr.  Low, 
the  president  of  this  league,  in  conversation  with 
the  commercial  reporter  of  a  leading  daily,  makes 
a  trifling,  incidental  allusion  to  that  question,  that 
the  reporter  grasps  as  being  a  pertinent  clue  that 
may  lead  to  a  "  big  find  ";  and  which,  as  he  reasons, 
may  be  most  assiduously  followed  up  under  the 
specious  guise  of  collecting  statistics  without 
arousing  any  suspicion,  and  which  ultimately 
conducts  him  safely  to  the  realization  of  the  laud- 
able object  which  he  sets  out  to  attain:  "the 
disastrous  undoing  of  that  grand,  national,  spoli- 
ating combination." 

Through  the  members  of  the  league,  G-arland 
from  time  to  time  learns  something  of  the  muddy 
seethings  of  the  subtle  under-current  which  his 
adroit  energy  and  far-reaching  enterprise,  is  pro- 
voking to  form  against  him.     This,  from  the  tur- 


bulent restlessness  of  its  impatient  nature,  it  is 
easily  perceptible,  will  rise  some  day  in  mad  fury 
to  sweep  him  from  a  position  that  is  daily  grow- 
ing so  enviable  that  will  speedily  become  securely 
impregnable  and  placidly  defy  the  most  formid- 
able forces  that  may  possibly  assail  him  here, 
seeking  to  banish  him  eflfectually  from  the  last 
vestige  of  a  commercial  existence. 

Outside  the  circle  of  his  brother  members  of 
the  league,  he  never  intimates  to  any  one  that 
the  nature  of  the  unequal  struggle  in  which  he 
will  soon  be  forced  to  engage  is  at  all  known  to 
him,  the  "  True  Friend  "  alone  excepted.  They 
rarely  meet,  and  then,  as  a  rule,  in  a  way  that 
is  impracticable  to  discuss  a  subject  so  mysteri- 
ously sinister  as  is  this.  This  estimable  gentleman 
admits  that  all  G-arland's  misgivings  are  well- 
founded,  but  at  the  same  time,  ne  declares  most 
emphatically  that  he  is  wholly  unable  to  divine 
the  motives  that  prompt  men  of  means,  influence 
and  high  standing  in  business  circles,  to  stoop  to 
the  attempt  even,  to  crush  a  weak  and  compara- 
tively friendless  man.  He  deems  that  all  should 
appreciate  Garland's  struggles  as  an  humble  actor 
in  their  lower  ranks,  in  the  grand  battle  to  gain 
the  control  of  a  leading  Southern  industry  and 
the  trade  that  is  inseparable  from  it,  in  which  the 
city  is  now  engaged  and  which  will  but  tend  to 
promote  the  common  interest  of  the  whole  in  a 
degree  far  greater  than  may  by  any  means  ever 
benefit  their  anticipated  victim. 

Sometimes  people  are  too  much  blinded  by 
jealous  prejudice  to  jDerceive  clearly  their  own 
interest,  and  are  willing  even  to  sacrifice  this,  to 
a  certain  extent  at  least,  in  order  to  gratify  their 
malice.  In  the  instance  of  this  spirit,  as  mani- 
fested toward  Garland,  however,  the  aversion 
and  spite  must  have  been  generated  and  influ- 
enced by  the  promptings  of  strongly  actuating 
instinct,  that  vaguely  intimated  his  dark  and 
mysterious  character.  This  appears  logically  rea- 
sonable, because  there  is  some  divining  ken  in 
the  intellectual  faculties  of  mankind,  wliich  often 
seems  to  understand  that  there  are  hidden  sins  in 
the  hearts  of  other  people,  although  there  be  no 
way  by  which  this  feeling  might  be  explained. 


THE  WILDLY  FLUCTUATING   VICISSITUDES. 


219 


CHAPTER  LXII. 

TUE    WILDLY    FLUCTUATING    VICISSITUDES. 

"  There  is  thy  gold  ;  worse  poison  to  men's  souls, 
Doirjg  more  murders  in  this  loathsome  world. 
Than  these  poor  compounds  thou  may'st  not  sell. 

*  *  *  *  *  *  * 

Poor  wretch!  dark  ambition  and  deep  pride, 
And  cold  disdain,  for  the  buffeting  tide, 
Which  thou   would'st  stem  or  sink  in  the  vain 
Attempt,  were  the  compounds  of  thy  deadly  bane. 
Could'st  thou  have  brooked  the  ills  of  fate; 
Or  had'st  thou  been  true,  or  mend'd  ere  too  late, 
And  with  a  modest  station  been  content, 
Thou  might'st  not  had  greater  faults  to  repent. 
But  thou  must  soar  and  fight  for  loft'er  sway. 
And  be  all  or  nothing,  in  one  little  day." 

— Shakspeake. 

As  THE  weeks  come  and  go,  G-arland,  with  a 
daily  increasing  business,  finds  his  perplexities  and 
difficulties  constantly  augmenting. 

The  money  market  is  hare  and  perfectly 
stringent. 

Owing  to  his  acute  knowledge  of  the  value 
of  cotton,  and  firmness  against  the  principle  of 
making  concessions,  he  cannot  always  sell  when 
he  wishes  to  do  so ;  in  fact,  the  buyers  meet  his 
views,  only  when  they  are  forced  to  take  his 
cotton  to  complete  their  orders. 

His  demands  for  money  are  very  soon  in  excess 
of  the  ability  of  his  little  bank  to  supply.  Here 
is  a  dilemma.  He  has  'tried  in  vain  to  place  his 
account  with  other  banks  during  the  flush  times 
and  the  dullest  season  of  the  year  before  the 
panic.  Of  what  use  will  it  be  to  make  the  attempt 
now,  when  the  banks  are  all  taxed  to  their  ut- 
most capacity  to  supply  the  sorely  pressing 
demands  of  their  own  customers  ? 

However,  he  does  nevertheless  try;  and  not 
only  does  he  try,  but  he  actually  succeeds  in 
negotiating  arrangements  with  three  of  the  best 
banks  in  the  city,  in  one  day. 

He  has  a  deep  plan  to  do  business  under  the 
same  privilege  as  is  in  vogue  in  New  Orleans ;  viz. 
to  borrow  money  on  his  bills  of  lading,  giving 
at  the  same  time  to  the  bank  an  order  on  the 
transportation  company  to  deliver  the  cotton  on 
its  arrival  to  some  certain  ware-houses,  and  an 
order  on  these  to  deliver  their  receipts  to  the 
bank  when  they  receive  the  cotton. 


In  New  Orleans,  the  cotton  factor  who  wishes 
to  borrow  money  on  cotton  before  it  arrives,  takes 
the  bills  of  lading  for  the  number  of  bales  that 
he  desires  to  hypothecate,  as  collateral  security 
for  each  loan  the  bank  grants  him,  and  indorses 
his  order  on  them  to  deliver  the  cotton  that 
they  represent  to  the  ware-house  with  which  he 
designs  to  store  it.  Then  he  makes  out  an  order 
on  the  ware-house  to  deliver  the  cotton  described 
by  marks  in  the  face  of  the  bills  of  lading  to  the 
order  of  his  bank,  and  attaches  all  to  his  note 
foixliscount.  The  bank  then  sends  the  order  and 
the  bills  of  lading  by  its  own  collector  or  runner 
to  the  ware-house;  the  ware-house  man  accepts 
the  order  and  retains  the  bills  of  lading. 

The  bank  has  its  security,  the  best  in  the  world — 
a  genuine  ware-house  receipt  for  cotton ;  the  factor 
gets  his  money ;  all  parties  are  mutually  satisfied 
with  the  transaction,  as  well  as  being  equally 
benefited  by  it.  In  the  "  Future  City  "  the  ware- 
houses issue  a  separate  receipt  for  every  bale  of 
cotton  under  serial  numbers,  beginning  at  number 
one,  with  the  first  bale  received  in  the  month  of 
September,  and  terminating  with  the  last  one 
received  in  August — a  system  that  first  originated 
in  the  tobacco  ware-house,  and  was  then  apjDlied 
to  cotton  bales  instead  of  tobacco  hogsheads,  be- 
cause at  first  all  the  cotton  was  stored  in  tobacco 
ware-houses.  Garland  regards  the  system  as 
being  a  nuisance,  and  tries  to  have  it  abolished. 

So  far  as  the  transactions  with  \he  banks  are 
concerned,  they  might,  however,  be  effected  un- 
der the  "Future  City"  system,  with  the  same 
facility  as  under  that  in  vogue  in  the  Crescent 
City ;  and  to  secure  that  end  Garland  makes  his 
arrangements. 

Then,  for  almost  the  only  time  during  his  busi- 
ness career,  he  breathes  freer  for  a  brief  space  of 
days;  and  he  tries  to  flatter  himself  that  the 
worst  is  over. 

By  some  unaccountable  fatality,  however,  there 
is  a  strong  influence  m  the  Board  of  each  bank 
against  him  on  the  bill  of  lading  arrangement;  and 
in  just  three  days  after  it  is  made,  he  is  informed 
that  he  can  have  all  the  money  he  wants  on  the 
spot  ware-house  receipts  accompanied  by  certifi- 
cates of  insurance,  but  on  no  other  terms,  against 
cotton  security. 


220 


MYSTIC  ROMAx^CES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


He  is  at  last  cornered.  He  has  agents  out  in 
all  directions  in  the  cotton  belt,  who  have  made 
numerous  arrangements  under  which  parties  are 
shipping  cotton;  and  they  are  daily  making  still 
further  arrangements  with  new  shippers. 

He  has  no  resources  with  which  to  tide  over  the 
time  between  the  drafts  coming  in  for  payment 
and  the  arrival  of  the  cotton.  And  as  if  further 
to  aggravate  the  embarrassing  situation,  the  rail- 
road becomes  blocked  with  more  cotton  than  it 
has  facilities  to  move,  so  that  it  does  not  arrive 
promptly,  while  the  drafts  are  not  delayed. 

It  is  the  twentieth  of  the  month.  On  the  first 
day  of  the  next  month  he  will  have  city  bills 
to  pay,  ranging  from  between  twenty  and  thirty 
thousand  dollars,  and  cotton  drafts  to  meet  for 
perhaps  a  greater  amount ;  and,  in  all  probability, 
before  a  bale  of  cotton  arrives. 

In  the  meantime,  the  instalment  notes  of  his 
Louisiana  successor  become  due ;  several  of  the 
insurance  companies  succumb  to  the  pressure  of 
the  panic ;  the  firm  of  his  father-in-law  collects 
no-  money  from  the  planters,  and  the  creditors 
are  menacing  Garland. 

It  is  difficult  to  conc-eive  a  more  lioj^eless  and 
helpless  predicament  in  Avhich  a  man  may  be 
placed  right  in  the  active  stages  of  a  prosperous 
and  rapidly  growing  business,  than  that  which 
now  distresses  wayward  Garland. 

Up  to  this  time,  his  record  as  a  merchant  will 
most  favorably  stand  the  test  of  comparison  with 
the  business  men  of  this  age,  many  of  whom  make 
most  disgraceful  failures  that  do  not  pay  their 
creditors  five  per  cent.,  under  less  plausible  pre- 
tenses than  he  has  had  for  suspending,  both  in 
Louisiana  and  also  in  the  "Future  City."  But 
now  the  time  has  arrived  when  that  alternative 
seems  to  be  inevitable — the  last  and  only  course 
that  harmonizes  with  honor. 

There  are  few  persons  Avho  know  this  strange 
man,  who  would  hesitate  to  doubt  that  he  would 
rather  go  to  his  last  long  sleep  at  the  bottom  of 
the  noble  Mississippi,  than  to  a:bandon  his  ill-fated 
project,  created  under  the-  stimulating  intoxica- 
tion of  an  ambitious  delusion.  But  he  neverthe- 
less resolves  to  abandon  his  doomed  craft.  On 
Saturday  night  he  leaves  the  office  determined 


to  suspend  on  Monday.  It  is  a  bitter,  gloomy 
contemplation. 

He  had  once  heard  from  an  old  cotton  mer- 
chant, in  his  narratives  of  the  ups  and  downs  of 
the  trade,  and  the  rise  and  fall  of  houses  in  it, 
during  a  period  of  half  a  century,  some  strange 
stories  about  the  many  expedients  to  Avhich  sink- 
ing houses  resorted  to  keep  afloat  until  the  crisis 
of  the  storm  Avas  safely  passed. 

Early  on  Sunday  he  meets  and  has  an  inter- 
view with  a  man  who  has  been  employed  in  the 
banks,  and  who  also  knows  that  Garland  is  em- 
barrassed for  the  want  of  actively  available  facil- 
ities to  meet  cotton  drafts,  owing  to  his  inability 
to  obtain  money  until  the  cotton  arrives.  This 
man  tells  him  of  numerous  instances  of  mer- 
chants who  he  knew  to  have  been  detected 
doing  business  on  spurious  collaterals,  without 
experiencing  any  trouble  other  than  being  obliged 
to  make  their  accounts  good.  These  he  says  the 
bank  officers  well  knew  would  be  made  good,  no 
matter  what  else  was  permitted  to  suflfer. 

He  then  finally  suggests  to  Garland  the  feasi- 
bility of  such  a  plan  of  operations,  as  a  sure  means 
of  relief,  and  offers,  for  quite  areasonable  consider- 
ation, to  assist  him  in  bringing  it  to  perfection. 

He  suggests  that  Garland  have  blank  ware- 
house receipts  filled  up  with  the  dates^  numbers  and 
marks  of  those  he  is  receiving,  in  order  that  they 
will  be  exact  duplicates  of  genuine  receipts,  and 
turn  them  over  to  him,  and  he  will  have  them  sig- 
ned so  skillfully  that  the  signature  will  without 
difficulty  or  suspicion.,  pass  with  any  of  the  banks. 
He  says  he  can  make  a  set  of  duplicates  for  each 
bank,  should  Garland  desire  or  need  so  many. 

This  is  a  great  temptation,  but  Garland  rejects 
it  Avith  contemptuous  disdain.  In  parting,  the 
man  tells  him  that  should  he  decide  to  change  his 
mind  at  any  time,  his  services  are  obtainable. 

By  Sunday's  mails  Garland  receives  the  most 
l^itterly  reproachful  letters  from  his  father-in-law 
and  brother-in-law,  for  having  abandoned  them, 
Avith  the  debts  of  the  old  firm  unpaid,  which  are 
noAV  threatening  them  Avith  immediate  and  ir- 
retrievable ruin.  Besides  thtse,  he  also  receives 
one  from  Manonia,  breathing  the  most  tender 
sentiments  of  love  and  devotion  for  himself,  but, 
at  the  same  time  pathetically  appealing  to  him  to 


THE  WILDLY  FLUCTUATING  VICISSITUDES. 


221 


make  one  herculean  effort  to  relieve  the  distress 
of  her  father,  and  save  him  from  the  cruel  dis- 
aster that  is  about  to  overvs^helm  him.  G-arland 
is  in  a  gloomy  plight  to  afford  consolation  and 
relief  to  the  afflicted  and  the  suffering. 

Immediately  after  supper  this  same  Sabbath 
evening,  he  goes  to  his  office ;  locks  the  outer  and 
inner  doors ;  makes  a  fire ;  turns  the  gas  jet  at 
his  desk  lovr ;  and  passes  the  sohtary  hours  be- 
tween slowly  pacing  to  and  fro,  and  sitting  with 
his  head  rechning  on  his  desk,  thinking,  dream- 
ing, sighing. 

There  is  a  war  of  fiercely  conflicting  emotions 
raging  in  this  hope- void,  woe-begone  breast ;  and 
he  soliloquizes : 

Oh  Grod,  oh  Heaven!  names  of  refuge,  sources 
of  consolation  to  me  baned  and  barred!  Alas 
that  thitherward  I  may  not  turn  for  counsel  and 
comfort!  False  wretch!  Base,  damnable  deceiver ! 
Too  late,  too  late !  I  cannot  recall  those  way- 
ward steps,  nor  again  retrace  them. 

"  Far  above  me,  up,  up  precipitous  and  impas- 
sable steeps,  is  that  broad  and  beauteous  plain  of 
honor,  whence  I  descended,  and  from  which  I 
am  an  exile  and  a  stranger !  Below,  down,  deep 
down  lies  the  yawning  abyss — the  fathomless  gulf 
of  perdition. 

"  To  advance  but  another  step  is  to  make  the 
dread  and  desperate  phmge.  Here  I  am  on  bar- 
ren wastes  and  icy  crags,  amid  the  tempest's  fury 
that  must  sweep  me  from  this  untenable  sphere. 
Then,  as  for  myself,  I  am  lost,  lost ! 

"  But  can  I  save  any  others  without  engulfing 
still  some  with  me?  Poor  Manonia!  but  for 
her,  I  would  care  nothing  for  my  own  fate. 
Under  no  state  of  circumstances  that  rests  within 
the  pale  of  posibilities  can  I  save  her.  I  must 
go  a  veritable  beggar  onto  the  street — an  object 
of  scorn  and  contempt,  to  brook  the  jeers  and  in- 
sults of  my  gloating  enemies.  The  doom  of  her 
father  and  brother  is  sealed.  What  then  can  I 
any  longer  be  to  her  ?  Would  it  not  be  better 
to  save  them  for  her,  and  that  she  should  lose  me 
forever,  than  that  all  should  be  lost  ?  If  she  but 
knew  that  shadowy  and  false  nature  of  my  ex- 
istence, my  loss,  for  myself,  would  not  cost  her  a 
pang. 


"  But  how  can  it  be  within  my  power  to  save 
them.     Surely  they  must  sink  with  me. 

"  Oh  that  I  could  deprive  my  enemies  of  their 
rejoicings  over  my  fall !  What  would  I  do  to 
foil  them?  What  would  I  hesitate  to  do? 
Nothing  that  Shakspeare  makes  Juliet  conjure 
Friar  Lawrence  bid  her  do,  rather  than  yield  to 
the  consequences  of  the  dangers  that  menanced 
her. 

"  But  why  are  they  my  enemies  ?  Merely  be- 
cause it  is  the  will  of  Fate.  I  have  purposely  pro- 
voked no  one.  I  am  and  have  been  laboring  for 
the  interest  of  this  city.-  For  that  reason,  if  for 
no  other,  I  am  entitled  to  a  far  greater  degree  of 
favorable  consideration  and  kindUer  encourage- 
ment than  I  have  received  from  the  masses  of 
those  acquainted  with  the  true  nature  of  my 
undertakings. 

"  I  have  offered  the  banks  unquestionably  safe 
security,  in  the  best  shape  it  was  possible  for  me 
to  present  it  under  the  circumstances,  and  de- 
mand money,  to  which,  by  the  nature  and  im- 
portance of  my  business,  I  am  clearly  entitled, 
but  which  I  am  unable  to  obtain. 

"  Would  it,  then,  if  the  banks  are  sufficiently 
unwary  to  permit  it,  be  a  great  wrong  to  obtain 
this  same  money  from  them  for  identically  the 
same  purpose,  without  any  security?  I  do  not 
believe  it  would. 

"But  to  what  terrible  consequences  may  not 
this  lead?  To  what  can  it  lead  that  is  more  to 
be  dreaded  than  the  disasters  tliat  are  now  about 
to  crush  me  ?  Why,  nothing ;  no,  nothing.  Not 
even  the  dungeon's  gloom  nor  its  clanking  chains 
of  bitter  slavery. 

"  This  scheme  to  use  duplicate  ware-house  re- 
ceipts appears  to  promise — what?  Are  there  not 
sinister  features  in  that?  Would  it  not  be  for- 
gery ?  Could  it  be  safe  for  one  day  ?  I  distrust 
it.  It  is  but  an  infamous  plot  to  entrap  me.  I 
would  be  immediately  arrested  the  first  day.  I 
will  not  touch  it. 

"But  then,  what  would  being  arrested  amount 
to  with  me  ?  I  might  as  well  go  to  prison  for 
combatting  to  sustain  a  wortliy  cause  by  unfair 
means — to  contravene  unjust  persecution,  as  to  . 
go  on  the  street  a  vagrant  for  abandoning  it.  Can 
the  end  justify  the  means  ? 


222 


MYSTIC   KOMANCES   OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GKEY. 


"  lusignificaut  as  it  would  generally  be  es- 
teemed, my  failure,  just  now,  would  be  a  calamity 
to  the  cotton  interest  here. 

"  But  I  must  consult  a  lawyer.  I  will  write 
at  once.  I  will  tide  over  to-morrow  some  way, 
and  trust  to  Fate." 

Garland  at  once  turns  up  the  gas  jet,  and 
writes: 

"Hon.  Simon  Retainer. 

"City. 

^  Dear  Sir  : 

"Enclosed  find  —  amount,  your  cus- 
tomary fee  for  a  legal  opinion,  which  I  wish 
carefully  considered  for  a  friend  of  mine,  dehvered 
personally  to  me  by  your  messenger,  before  m. 
to-morrow,  on  the  following  point,  to  wit : 

"  Suppose  a  merchant,  in  active  business,  with- 
out making  any  statement  relative  to  the  genu- 
ineness of  the  paper,  should  use  with  a  bank  as 
collateral  security  against  loans,  duplicates  of 
genuine  ware-house  receipts,  for  goods  which  he 
actually  held;  with  no  intention  to  defraud  the 
bank,  but  with  a  fixed  determination  to  pay  the 
money  at  maturity ;  and  using  the  money  strictly 
in  his  business,  witjiout  squandering  or  in  any 
way  attempting  to  conceal  or  put  it  beyond  the 
reach  of  the  law  in  the  operations  of  its  process : 
and  should  the  bank,  before  the  money  was  due, 
discover  the  worthless  character  of  the  collaterals, 
and  arrest  the  party,  who  would  then  declare  his 
abihty  and  willingness  to  redeem  his  pledge ;  and 
was  he  able  to  demonstrate  that  such  was  a  true 
state  of  the  situation — would  he,  under  the  strict 
letter  of  the  law,  be  subject  to  criminal  penalties? 
"Yours  truly, 

"NUBE    GrARLAND." 


This  letter  is  addressed,  and  the  writer  walks 
by  the  post-office,  and  deposits  it  in  the  night-box. 

He  then  goes  to  his  hotel,  and  retires  to  sleep 
— the  disquiet  sleep  of  the  wretched,  who  know 
not  peaceful  repose. 

Monday  morning,  he  finds  that  two  hundred 
bales  of  cotton  have  arrived  since  Saturday  even- 
ing, which  make  ten  thousand  dollars  that  will 
be    available   that  day;    and  there  are  bills  of 


lading  for  four  huntked  bales,  in  the  mails.  Early 
in  the  day,  he  sells  three  hundred  bales.  That  will 
unlock  seven  or  eight  thousand  dollars  more 
within  the  next  three  days. 

Before  ten  o'clock,  he  receives  the  foUowing: 

^^ Dear  Sir: 

'•  In  reply  to  your  question,  I  have  to 
say  that  it  is  a  well-estabhshed  principle  of  law 
that  to  constitute  a  crime,  in  cases  like  that  sup- 
posed by  you,  the  intention  to  cheat  and  defraud 
must  exist  in  the  mind  at  the  time  the  act  is 
performed. 

"  As  a  matter  of  course,  the  state  of  the  mind 
can  be  arrived  at  or  estabhshed  only  by  inference 
drawn  from  the  acts  of  the  party  at  the  time  and 
after  the  transaction  is  made.  In  such  cases,  the 
natural  presumption  generally  is  that  the  bent  of 
the  mind  at  the  time  was  criminal. 

"But  in  a  case  with  all  the  points  and  circum- 
stances just  as  you  have  proposed  them,  the  law 
and  decisions  would  not,  in  my  opinion,  sustain  a 
criminal  conviction. 

"  Yours  truly, 

"  Simon  Retainep,  Atty. 

"  N.  Garland,  Esq." 


This  is  the  opinion  of  an  eminent  practitioner, 
who  has  served  many  years  on  the  bench. 

Thirty  minutes  after  reading  this  letter.  Gar- 
land is  closeted  with  the  same  man  who  had  ad- 
vised him  to  resort  to  that  means  for  relief,  and 
opens  the  interview: 

Garland:  "Now,  Mr.  Expedient,  I  want  to 
say  here  to  you  that  I  mistrust  your  sincerity, 
and  beheve  that  you  come  to  me  as  a  miserable 
decoy,  in  the  interest  of  my  enemies,  who  thus 
hope  to  trap  me.  I  have,  however,  determined 
to  test  your  sincerity.  If  you  are  acting,  and 
propose  to  act  in  good  faith,  copy  and  subscribe 
to  this  paper,  in  your  own  handwriting,  as  a 
pledge." 

Expedient:  " Certainly  I  will ;  but  I  suppose 
you  will  allow  me  to  retain  a  copy,  or  give  me  a 
counter-paper  '^*' 

Garland:  "No,  sir;  I  will  do  neither;  nor 
anything  but  pay  you  the  price  per  thousand 
named  by  yourself." 


THE  WILDLY  FLUCTUATING  YICISSITUDES. 


223 


Expedient:  "Very  well,  then;  I  will  at  once 
accept  your  terms.  When  shall  I  expect  some- 
thing to  do  ?  " 

Gtarland:  "To-night — if  it  can  be  arranged 
so  soon." 

A  few  minutes  later,  Garland  is  in  a  printing 
establishment,  having  the  blanks  run  off.  Before 
supoer,  four  clerks  have  filled  up  twelve  hundred 
of  them,  and  they  are  in  the  hands  of  Expedient 
for  manipulation. 

At  nine  o'clock  the  next  morning  they  are  re- 
turned with  the  signature  so  Avell  executed  that 
an  expert  would  be  staggered  to  decide,  in  a  com- 
parison, wherein  there  is  any  difference  between 
it  and  the  genuine  one. 

G-arland  and  Expedient  are  alone  in  a  private 
room. 

G-ARLAND :  "  You  havB  done  all  you  promised ; 
and  now  here  is  your  money.  I  want  you  now 
to  understand  me,  and  to  appreciate  your  position. 
You  are  in  my  power.  I  shall  at  all  times  keep 
myself  in  a  shape  to  take  up  this  paper  without 
delay.  Do  not,  then,  I  warn  you  in  advance, 
delude  yourself  with  the  imagination  that  I  am 
at  your  mercy;  nor  make  the  fatal  mistake  of 
attempting  to  use  me  in  any  way  through  the 
influence  of  this  connection  between  us ;  because 
if  you  do,  let  me  tell  you  it  will  be  woe  unto 
yourself. 

"I  have  taken  the  precaution  in  this  matter  to 
make  ample  preparation  to  guard  myseK  against 
all  such  possible  contingencies.  I  shall  use  you 
the  same  way,  whenever  occasion  requires,  for 
the  same  consideration;  and  you  will  not  delay 
nor  demand  extra  remuneration. 

"  I  know  you  now  to  be  a  very  dangerous  man ; 
but  be  true  to  your  villainy  with  me,  and  I  will 
never  harm  you,  not  even  though  I  am  in  trouble, 
so  long  as  I  am  well  assured  that  you  did  not 
cause  its  origin." 

Expedient:  "  You  need  have  no  fears.  There 
was  no  danger  of  my  ever  betrajang  you,  any 
way;  now  you  are  doubly  safe.  I  now  under- 
stand why  you  demanded  that  tell-tale  document." 

G-arland  :  "  You  are  correct  in  your  surmises. 
I  know  human  nature  sufl&ciently  well  to  be  as- 
sured that  any  man  who  will  propose  what  you 
did,  and  do  what  you  have  done,  will  not  hesitate 


to  levy  blackmail  or  to  sell  his  secret,  as  long  as 
there  is  no  danger  of  putting  his  own  neck  into 
the  halter ;  but  while  you  cannot  do  either  V/'ithout 
becoming  the  chief  defendant  yourself,  you  are 
harmless.  To  be  more  explicit,  I  can  at  all  times, 
and  under  all  circumstances  defy  you. 

"My  purpose  is  not  to  harm  the  banks,  but 
merely  to  obtain  money  to  which  I  am  entitled, 
or  which  the  nature  and  importance  of  my  busi- 
ness should  entitle  me  to  receive;  and  I  want 
immunity  from  all  such  annoyance  as  you  might 
cause,  and  I  have  got  it.     That  is  all." 

At  twelve  o'clock  on  this  same  day.  Garland 
has  to  his  credit  in  four  banks  sixty  thousand 
dollars,  on  the  faith  of  tliose  twelve  hundred 
worthless  bits  of  paper.  These  represent  a  value 
of  more  than  eighty  thousand  dollars.  They  are 
accepted  by  the  banks  without  hesitation  or  ques- 
tion, and  money  loaned  thereon,  which  he  has 
sought  in  vain  to  obtain  on  the  faith  of  legitimate 
A'alue — and  value  which  he  would  now  be  most 
happy  to  place  under  the  control  of  the  banks,  in 
lieu  of  the  detestable  trash  which  he  does  deposit. 

Here,  now,  at  last,  is  the  matured  fruit  of  a 
little  evil  seed  sown  nine  years  before,  in,  com- 
paratively speaking,  almost  aij  innocent  way— 
a  seed  the  production  of  which  Garland  struggled 
to  destroy,  but  which  the  irrevocable  decree  of 
destiny  had  rendered  irradicably  fixed;  secure 
against  every  ingdliuity  of  man;  able  to  defy 
every  means  that  he  might  attempt  to  employ  for 
its  extirpation,  as  long  as  he  did  not  assail  it  with 
unalloyed  truth,  and  show  in  reahty  the  nude 
deformity  of  the  deceptive  artifice  by  which  it 
was  at  first  planted  and  germinated.  Thus  the 
M^eed  grew  unchecked  ever  after,  blossomed  and 
produced  fruit  each  time  a  little  nearer  matured. 
First  the  assumption  of  a  false  name;  next  the 
marrying  of  Manonia  under  that  name ;  and  now, 
finally,  the  perpetration  of  a  great  commercial 
criine. 

This  is  a  matter  in  its  exact  similarity  to  such 
prodigious  numbers  of  cases  in  this  country — a 
very  inconsiderable  per  cent,  of  which  never 
come  to  the  light  of  day — that  is  fraught  with  such 
stupendous  importance  to  society  and  its  peaceful 
prosperity,  looming  up  in  a  horrible  form  of 
hideous  monstrosity  and  gigantic  magnitude  so 


224 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


fiendishly  diabolical  and  so  appallingly  burdened 
with  overwhelming  curses,  that  we  dare  not  light- 
ly pass  it  by,  nor  wholly  ignore  its  execrable  de- 
structiveness. 

Taking  a  merely  casual  view  of  the  case,  hastily, 
as  people  of  this  fast  country  and  age  are  prone 
to  consider  such,  it  is  apt  to  receive  an  un- 
merited verdict,  and  the  gravity  of  its  import 
be  too  charitably  estimated. 

This  is  now  a  case  that  furnishes  a  commercial 
lesson  of  such  momentous  proportions  that  its 
value  is  not  at  all  likely  to  be  duly  appreciated — 
a  damnable  thraUdom  of  hope-wasting,  life-blight- 
ing destruction,  in  which  untold  and  unknown 
thousands  of  good  and  useful  men  are  perpetually 
enchained ;  and  who  are  every  day  of  their  false 
and  dungeon-haunted  hves,  imperihng  the  bril- 
liant prospects,  the  cherished  dreams,  the  price- 
less name  of  promising  and  happy  families. 

Take  Garland's  case,  as  it  developed,  and  it 
will  awaken  palliating  sympathy  in  the  breast  of 
the  average  man,  and  receive  from  him  a  sen- 
timent of  charitable  forbearance,  to  which  it 
really  seems  that  he  is,  at  least  partially,  entitled. 
He  is  engaged  in  a  grand  and  laudable  enter- 
prise, which  he  has  striven  to  prosecute  with 
honorable  fidelity,  with  unflagging  energy,  in- 
domitable will,  unyielding  fortitude  and  coura- 
geous tenacity,  in  the  face  of  crushing  difficulties 
and  hopeless  discouragement,  that  are  truly 
admirable.  His  distress  has  not  sprung  from  any 
present  misconduct  on  his  part.  And  as  to  his 
motives,  they  are,  unquestionably,  unimpeach- 
able. He  does  not  dream,  to  all  perceptible  ap- 
pearances, of  defrauding  the  banks. 

If  he  d(ics  design  to  defraud,  he  Avill  raise  a 
quarter  of  a  million  of  money,  take  a  short  busi- 
ness trip,  and  fail  to  return.  If  his  object  is  not 
fraud,  he  will  be  far  more  sure  to  redeem  that 
dangerous  paper  at  the  maturitj^  of  his  notes 
than  were  all  his  transactions  based  on  genuine 
documents;  because  there  could  then  be  no  dan-- 
ger  of  incurring  criminal  penalties. 

His  business  is  wonderfully  important  to  the 
commercial  prosperity  of  his  adopted  city.  So, 
taking  a  liberal  view  of  the  case,  as  it  appears 
hedged  around  by  its  strangely  peculiar  circum- 


stances, we  are  almost  jsersuaded  to  concede  that 
the  end  justifies  the  means. 

But,  alas!  when  we  endeavor  to  apply  the 
inexorable  and  unbending  rules  of  honest  truth 
and  majestic  right  to  test  the  fabrication  of  this 
structure,  it  crumbles  to  dust.  It  will  not  bear 
an  analytical  scrutiny,  because,  no  matter  how 
beneficial  the  result  might  prove  to  the  commu- 
nity or  to  the  cause  of  humanity — even  though  it 
emancipate  the  pauper  and  the  indigent  toiler, 
and  elevate  them  to  independent  affluence — it  can- 
not stand,  founded  on  deception  and  constructed 
by  falsehood,  from  means  unfairly  obtained. 
Could  it  be  possible  for  it  to  become  the  means 
of  turning  to  the  metropolis  all  the  cotton  in  the 
land,  or  of  saving  the  whole  city  from  being 
plunged  into  annihilating  ruin,  not  even  both  of 
these  powerful  results  would  justify  nor  excuse  a 
course  that  truly,  at  all  times,  and  under  every 
state  of  circumstances  or  shade  of  color  of  a 
pretext,  must  remain  unpardonable. 

This  man  had  flattering  promises  and  bright 
business  prospects  to  tempt  him,  besides  other 
personal  considerations.  Extravagant  dissipation 
leads  many  merchants  into  the  snare  of  adopting 
this  infamous  expedient  in  some  shape  or  other, 
in  order  to  buoy  up  and  keep  afloat  their  sinking 
ships,  without  any  reasonable  prospect  or  defina- 
ble plan  for  the  future.  Thus  they  drift  as  if  by 
hazard,  with  no  hope  of  ever  extricating  them- 
selves, from  the  whirlpool  of  entanglement  into 
which  they  are  rushed  by  the  fierce  billows; 
although  it  is  rarely  the  case  that  any  one  of 
them  either  designs  or  desires  to  defraud  the 
banks  or  delude  the  private  parties  whom  he 
victimizes.  They  make  one  forbidden  shuffling 
shift,  and  it  works  well.  Then  it  was  so  con- 
venient in  a  case  of  extreme  and  pressing  emer- 
gency, that  it  becomes  but  a  natural  result  for 
it  to  be  applied  as  a  remedy  to  the  next  case  of 
difficult  embarrassment.  And  with  men  who  find  it 
necessary  to  seek  relief  through  the  medium  of 
this  expedient,  trouble  that  imperatively  demands 
it,  is  ever  occurring  and  recurring. 

In  a  little  time  the  first  transaction  appears, 
demanding  attention;  soon  the  next  follows, 
and  other  and  new  ones  'intermingle  in  the 
meantime,  so  that  every  day  the  doomed  wretches 


THE  WILDLY  FLUCTUATING  VICISSITUDES. 


225 


become  deeper  and  deeper  involved,  until  finally 
tliey  find  themselves  most  helplessly  and  hope- 
lessly shackled,  loaded  down  with  the  galling 
chains  and  the  ruinous  consequences  of  their 
misdeeds ;  and  discover  also,  that  the  plea  of  their 
honest  intentions  is  both  untenable  and  unavail- 
ing. Now  they  become  reckless  and  extravagant 
if  they  were  not  already  so;  and  if  they  were, 
which  almost  always  is  the  case,  they  become 
yet  more  desperately  rash. 

To  all  these  general  rules,  Garland  was  a  re- 
markable exception.  He  worked  harder  than 
before,  maintained  his  constitutional  habits  of 
temperance,  and  an  almost  miserly  personal 
economy.  His  life  merged  into  one  concentral 
purpose,  to  which  everything  else  with  him  was 
subordinate :  to  steer  that  ponderous,  unwieldly 
overburdened  craft  of  commerce  into  the  haven 
for  which  he  had  launched  her — to  become  the 
first  and  leading  power  in  the  cotton  trade. 

This  opening  he  had  discovered,  but  never 
dared  dream  of  striving  to  fill,  because  he  knew 
from  the  commencement  that  with  him  it  must 
be  one  ceaseless  struggle  for  bare  existence  in 
the  humble  ranks  of  commerce ;  and  even  this 
was  very  doubtful.  But  immediately  on  find- 
ing himself  able  to  control  an  unlimited  amount 
of  money,  he  began  to  dream  and  to  plan. 

He  effects  an  early  settlement  with  the  credit- 
ors of  his  Louisiana  successor,  and  obtains  posses- 
sion of  all  that  paper.  He  then  writes  in  answer 
to  their  reproachful  letters:  "I  have  taken  up  all 
^'our  notes,  which  may  possibly  prove  to  be  an 
act  of  selling  myself  into  slavery ;  and  should  it 
thus  become,  remember,  I  conjure  you,  when  the 
echo  of  my  clanking  chains  is  wafted  to  you 
on  the  wings  of  the  wind,  that  your  unkind,  un- 
just and  cruel  letters  forged  some  of  their  unmer- 
ciful links."  This  done,  he  leaves  that  matter 
where,  years  before,  he  left  his  own  name — with 
the  things  of  the  past. 

After  this,  he  fits  out  his  ship,  and  sets  sail  on  a 
wild  voyage  leading  through  the  most  danger- 
ously treacherous  reefs  and  breakers  and  rocks, 
subject  and  trusting  to  the  guidance  of  breeze  or 
gale  or  storm,  without  Hfe-preserver,  boat,  rudder 
or  anchor,  fully  resolved  with  her  to  float  or  with 
her  to  sink.     Eeckless,  peril-beset  captain ! 


His  partners,  his  crew,  and  all  those  who  are 
tempted  by  her  imposing  statehness,  her  apparent 
staunchness,  and  the  rapid  speed  she  promises 
to  hazard  something  in  her  cargo,  are  in  blis.sful 
ignorance  of  her  true  condition,  and  the  dangers 
that  menace  her  and  them. 

Business  flows  to  G-arland's  firm  like  water,  in 
one  perpetual  and  ever-swelling  stream. 

How  promising  the  beautiful  craft,  had  her  tim- 
bers been  substantial  and  the  structure  supported 
only  by  the  truth !  But,  alas  !  the  quicksands  are 
beneath,  and  her  structure  is  held  together  by 
falsehood's  brittle  cement. 

G-arland's  firm  Avill  be  dissolved  by  limitation, 
September,  1874.  In  the  latter  end  of  the  active 
cotton-shipping  season,  an  old  gentleman  who 
has  heard  of  Garland's  fine  talents  and  thorough 
education  in  the  cotton  trade,  tlirough  a  promi- 
nent New  Orleans  house ;  and  of  his  rapid  rise  in 
the  face  of  such  serious  difiiculties;  and  his  flatter- 
ing prospects  for  the  future,  through  a  prominent 
New  York  firm,  comes  on  to  the  "  Future  City,"and 
remains  quietly  around  there  for  some  weeks. 
Then  he  makes  Garland's  acquaintance,  and  pro- 
poses a  co-partnership  of  five  years  with  Garland, 
for  his  son,  with  three  hundred  thousand  dol- 
lars in  cash.  Garland,  after  a  week's  considera- 
tion and  inquiries,  accepts  the  offer  for  Sept. 
1st,  1874. 

The  old  gentleman  is  exceedingly  anxious  that, 
in  the  interim^  Garland  shall  so  manage  his  busi- 
nes  as  to  lay  a  grand  foundation  for  the  new  firm. 
The  holding  of  a  large  fine  of  cotton,  and  making 
a  sale  of  a  champion  list,  at  a  season  of  the  year 
Avhen  it  will  attract  general  attention,  is  suggested. 
And  if  possible,  the  engaging  of  a  large  amount 
of  business  for  the  next  season  is  desirable.  By 
making  preliminary  advances  against  the  grow- 
ing crop,  this  is  practicable ;  and  he  is  urgent  to 
know  the  utmost  that  may  be  done. 

Garland  informs  him  that  he  thinks  he  can 
carry  five  thousand  bales  of  cotton  into  August, 
and  advance  one  hundred  thousand  dollars  on  the 
growing  crop ;  but  that  he  will  be  obliged  to  bor- 
row the  money,  to  be  paid  the  first  of  September. 

Then  a  lawyer  is  engaged,  and  the  articles  and 
contract  of  co-partnership  are  signed  and  sealed. 

It  is  conditioned  that  Garland  shall  do  what  he 


226 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


lias  asserted  he  can  do.  And  he  is  to  lay  out  on 
the  tables  a  list  of  all  the  cotton  samples  that  his 
sample-room  will  hold,  which  he  estimates  will 
amount  to  three  thousand  bales ;  and  also  to  have 
this  list  photographed,  and  then  handsomely- 
lithographed  on  the  back  of  cards  and  circulars, 
to  be  sent  all  over  the  cotton  belt  accessible  to 
the  "  Future  City"  trade.  This  Hst  of  cotton  is  to  be 
sold  in  the  last  week  of  August,  and  an  M —  Re- 
publican^ with  the  commercial  report  of  the  sale 
marked,  mailed  to  every  man  to  whom  the  litho- 
graph of  it  had  been  sent. 

Furthermore,  Garland  is  to  buy  and  elegantly 
furnish  a  residence  in  the  most  desirable  and 
healthful  section  of  the  city ;  and  in  it  furnish  his 
new  partner  and  wife  a  home,  as  long  as  mutu- 
ally agreeable  to  all  parties. 

His  partner  is  to  bear  half  the  expenses  and 
losses  that  may  be  incurred  in  connection  with 
the  commercial  feature  of  this  compact. 

The  old  gentleman  is  to  deposit  a  forfeit  of  one 
hundred  thousand  dollars  in  Government  bonds, 
as  a  guarantee  that  his  part  will  be  faithfully  per- 
formed, provided  that  Garland  fulfills  his  promise 
as  stipulated. 

In  all  the  morning  papers  of  the  first  of  Sep- 
tember the  notices  of  the  dissolution  of  the  old, 
and  the  formation  of  the  new  firm  are  to  appear, 
as  the  first  intimation  to  be  made  pubUc.  Until 
then  no  one  is  to  be  apprised  of  the  revolution  to 
take  place  in  this  firm. 

The  house  is  bought  under  the  hammer  for 
about  one-half  of  its  value  :  a  grand  old  mansion 
with  large  and  beautiful  grounds.  The  whole, 
inside  and  out,  is  beautifully  painted  and  frescoed, 
the  grounds  beautified,  and  an  iron  fence  placed 
in  front.  Then  the  house  is  superbly  furnished 
throughout. 

This  is  the  nature  and  character  of  the  resi- 
dence to  which  Manonia  returns  from  her  once 
happy  childhood's  home.  She  says  it  is  too 
grand  and  too  stylish  for  her.  But  she  tries  to  be 
happy  and  cheerful,  to  reward  Garland  for  the 
relief  that  he  afforded  her  father  and  brother. 

On  the  first  day  of  June,  Garland  is  carrying  a 
fearful  load,  amounting  to  more  than  six  hundred 
thousand  dollars,  mostly  represented  by  thou- 
sands of  bales  of  cotton,  and  more  than  one  mil- 


lion pounds  of  hog  product.  JIc  actually  owes 
the  banks  about  a  half  a  million  of  money,  and 
might  just  as  easily  owe  them  a  full  million. 
Both  outside  banks  and  numerous  private  parties 
pre.ss  him  to  accept  loans.  He  does  withdraw 
one  loan  from  a  bank,  and  transfers  it  to  a  private 
firm,  as  a  matter  of  accommodation.  The  reason 
that  he  owes  no  more  money,  is  simply  because 
he  cannot  employ  it.  He  has  all  that  he  can  use, 
including  the  one  himdred  thousand  dollars  which 
he  obhgated  himself  to  advance  to  aid  in  the  cul- 
tivation of  the  growing  cotton  crop.  This  he  is 
and  has  been  advancing  at  the  rate  of  twenty-five 
thousand  dollars  per  month. 

He  now  holds  in  his  own  safe  the  genuine  re- 
ceipts for  more  than  five  thousand  bales  of  cotton, 
while  the  banks  hold  perhaps  nearly  ten  thousand 
spurious  ones,  purporting  to  represent  this  same 
cotton. 

The  cotton  list,  amounting  to  between  twenty- 
five  hundred  and  three  thousand  bales,  is  laid  out  ; 
and  a  beautiful  photograph  made  of  the  room. 
Tills  is  now  handsomely  lithographed  on  the  back 
of  circulars  and  cards,  which  are  mailed  to  the 
cotton  districts  of  the  South,  whence  there  is  g, 
probabiUty  that  cotton  may  be  influenced  to  the 
"  Future  City." 

The  grand  Fourth  of  July  procession  in  cele- 
bra.tion  of  the  completion  of  the  great  bridge, 
together  with  Independence  Day,  takes  up  its 
march,  with  Garland's  firm  represented  by  a 
strong  wagon  loaded  with  bales  of  cotton  just  as 
they  leave  the  plantation  press.  This  wagon  is 
drawn  by  powerful  mules.  A  framed  photograph 
of  the  large  cotton  hst  is  suspended  from  -the 
ends  of  each  bale  of  cotton.  Above  them,  on 
either  side  of  the  wagon,  is  a  strip  of  muslin, 
containing  in  large  black  letters  the  name  of 
Garland's  firm,  and  this  prophetic  inscription: 
"The  Future  City  a  rising  market.  Good  for 
250,000  bales.  Crop  of  1874-5."  This  is  all;' 
there  is  no  regaha,  no  decorations ;  nothing 
about  this  wagon  that  does  not  portray  the  lofty 
aspirations  and  far-reaching  purposes  of  Nube 
Garland. 

Strange  scenes,  unique  occupations  for  the 
prince  of  criminals,  at  least  of  that  city  at  that 
time,  to  appear  engaged  in!    Yet  they  are,  never- 


THE  WILDLY  FLUCTUATING  VICISSITUDES. 


227 


theless,  recorded  realities  divested  of  every  iota  of 
the  romancer's  dreamings. 

About  this  time,  Garland  contracts  for  about 
one  hundred  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  bagging 
for  cotton.  He  also  conceives  the  idea  of  having  a 
controlUng  influence  in  or  of  owning  a  ware-house 
for  the  storing  and  compressing  of  cotton.  His 
chief  motive  is  to  have  for  his  own  receipts  of 
cotton  ample  facilities  unencumbered  by  the  mer- 
chandise of  other  large  receivers;  and  for  which, 
according  to  his  reasoning,  the  capacities  of  the 
only  legitimate  compress  ware-house  will  prove 
inadequate,  and  hence  occasion  much  vexatious 
delay  in  delivering  to  the  buyers.  Furthermore, 
he  believes  that  cotton  press-stock  is  destined  to 
be,  and  immediately,  the  best  property  in  the  city. 

He  proceeds  at  once  in  search  of  a  suitable  site 
for  the  building,  and  to  the  negotiation  for  two 
or  three  blocks  of  vacant  property.  This  attracts 
attention.  "  Any  ware-house  that  can  control  G-ar- 
land's  business  will  prosper,"  is  freely  admitted 
and  asserted,  even  by  parties  unfriendly  to  him. 

One  Avealthy  estate  owns  the  most  desirable 
property.  Quickly  a  representative  of  this  estate, 
and  four  other  parties  connected  with  the  largest 
iron  works,  prominent  banlcs,  etc.,  from  the  most 
conservative  class,  wait  on  Garland,  and  propose 
a  stock  company  of  six  persons.  Tliis  meets  Gar- 
land's views ;  is  just  what  he  would  have  desired, 
had  he  imagined  it  a  thing  possible  to  obtain. 
Hence  he  is  the  originator  of  the  scheme  that 
created,  as  well  as  the  cliristener  of  "  The  Factors' 
and  Brokers'  Cotton  Compress  Co.,"  to-day  a 
wealthy  and  prosperous  corporation. 

Through  the  father  of  his  prospective  partner 
and  connections  of  his  in  the  commercial  world, 
Garland  is  admitted  into  a  ring  formed  to  make 
a  corner  in  pork  for  September.  Garland  is  to 
buy  quietly  from  time  to  time  all  the  September 
contracts  that  he  can,  in  one  hundred  thousand 
pound  lots,  buyer's  option,  prior  to  the  last  day  of 
August ;  and  at  the  same  time  to  purchase  all  the 
spot  stock  that  he  can  find,  and  store  it.  It  is 
easy  for  him  to  do  this  without  in  any  way  creat- 
ing suspicion,  as  he  uses  one  hundred  thousand 
pounds  of  meat  sometimes  in  one  week,  and  is 
always  buying  ahead  and  storing  stock.  It  is 
generally  understood  that  he  expects  to  use  three 


times  as  much  meat  in  the  Southern  trade  after 
the  first  of  September  as  he  is  using  at  present. 

It  is  calculated  that  he  may,  in  all  probability, 
buy,  in  spot  stock  and  contracts,  five  million 
pounds  by  the  close  of  August,  necessitating  a 
cash  outlay  of  about  fifty  thousand  dollars.  And 
he  buys  about  half  a  million  pounds  per  week,  on 
the  average  basis  of  eleven  cents. 

His  future  partner's  side  buy  five  million 
pounds,  buyer's  option  contracts,  for  September, 
on  a  basis  of  ten  cents.  On  this,  and  all  that  Gar- 
land may  buy,  they  are  equally  to  divide  the  re- 
sults. Owing  to  the  nature  and  extent  of  the 
combination,  there  can  be  no  doubt  but  a  large 
and  active  advance  will  ensue.  This,  on  ten  mil- 
lion pounds  of  stock,  points  to  a  moderately 
modest  fortune. 

Such  is  Garland's  position  and  prospects  when 
he  enters  upon  the  second  half  of  July,  within 
forty-five  days  of  the  grand  haven  in  which  there 
will  be  absolute  safety  beyond  the  reach  of  storms, 
far  from  the  rock-bound  coasts  upon  which  the 
sweeping  surge  has  so  long  and  so  often  threat- 
ened to  hurl  him.  Once  safely  arrived,  he  can 
then  complacently  defy  all  eartlily  power  that 
might  either  threaten  or  assail  him  in  his  impreg- 
nable security. 

The  task  appears  already  achieved.  There  is 
no  more  money  to  be  borrowed.  The  cotton  hst 
is  to  be  sold ;  some  twenty  thousand  dollars  more 
to  be  advanced  to  the  cotton  States,  and  his  con- 
tract will  be  accomphshed. 

Then  he  wiU  be  enabled  in  one  day  to  remove 
from  existence  all  the  dangerous  paper  with  which 
he  has  so  long  kept  afloat,  and  which  has  en- 
abled him  to  pass  by  and  over  the  di-ead  breakers, 
where  otherwise  there  could  have  been  no  escape 
from  the  threatened  and  sure  ruin  of  a  hopeless 
and  irreparable  wreck. 

The  first  day  of  September  he  expects  will  in- 
stall him  in  a  position  of  influence,  prestige  and 
power  in  the  business  world  that  may  insure  the 
realization  of  the  wildest  dreams,  and  gratify  the 
aspirations  of  the  most  towering  ambition. 

With  an  active  capital  amounting  to  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  dollars,  bank  facilities  for  a  mil- 
lion more,  and  the  unlimited  commercial  credit 
which  his  new  firm  is  likely  to  enjoy  as  soon  as 


228 


IVIYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


it  is  introduced  to  the  imblic  in  the  Hue  in  which 
it  is  designed  to  be  engaged,  there  is,  comparatively 
speaking,  no  hmit  to  the  results  that  may  he 
possible  to  attain. 

The  twenty-ninth  of  July  is  the  day  appoiiitcil 
to  organize  the  Cotton  Compress  Co. 

Apparently,  the  dangers  are  all  passed.  The 
nature  of  Garland's  transactions  has  neither 
been  suspected  nor  questioned.  All  the  banks 
understand  that  their  notes  are  to  l>e  canceled 
in  the  early  days  of  September.  It  does  not  seem 
l^ossible  that  anything  may  transpire  to  disturb 
the  serenit}^  of  the  waters  during  the  remainder 
of  the  voyage. 

1  As  the  Indiaman,  for  months  lazily  traversing 
the  placid  waters  of  sleeping  tropical  seas,  sees  at 
length  the  dim  outline  of  the  welcome  home- 
ward shores  looming  up  against  the  distant  blue 
horizon — far  across  the  gold-tinted  crystals  of  the 
deep  as  they  ripple  in  the  mellow  rays  of  the  mid- 
summer setting  sun,  only  to  find  those  waters  on 
the  morrow  lAshed  by  the  Tornado's  unsparing 
whip,  driving  her  helplessly — whither  her  captain 
knows  not,  to  a  fate,  be  it  what  it  may,  from  which 
he  is  powerless  to  stay  her :  so  does  G-arland  per- 
ceive the  dark  and  angry  cloud  suddenly  and  un- 
expectedly rolling  \x]),  shutting  out  the  lights 
which  gleam  so  brilliantly  in  his  hope-beaming 
sky — a  hope  bnilt  on  sand  and  fashioned  of  reeds 
■ — and  quickly  feels  the  howling  blast  of  the  tem- 
pest's breath. 

Contrary  to  every  commercial  calculation  and 
probability,  the  cotton  market,  which  earlier  in 
the  season  promised  to  be  buoyant  and  advanc- 
ing in  August  and  September,  suddenly  breaks 
down — grows  panicky ;  then  becomes  so  com- 
pletely demoralized  that  September  contracts  are 
selling  at  a  figure  that  justiP/^s  the  street  esti- 
mates that  the  cotton  held  by  Garland's  firm  ;^'ill, 
should  the  market  become  no  lower,  which  the 
signs  of  the  times  indicate  that  it  may  do,  lose 
at  least  one  hundred  thousand  dollars. 

Naturally,  the  banks  are  alarmed,  and  will  either 
call  for  their  money,  or  demand  a  margin  equiva- 
lent to  the  shrinkage  in  the  value  of  the  cotton. 
The  situation  is  far  too  serious  and  urgent  to  be 
ignored.     Something  must  be  done,  and  quickly. 

The  "True  Friend"  calls  on  Garland,  and  tells 


him  frankly  that  he  must  unload;  that  there  is 
no  other  alternative  or  salvation  for  him.  The 
same  course  is  unanimously  urged  upon  him  by 
his  brother  members  of  the  league,  in  meeting 
for  deliberation.  He  is  forced  to  admit  the  stern 
necessity  of  adopting  this  advice. 

In  the  meantime,  meat  is  tending  upward, 
and  he  has  bought  contracts  within  a  few  days 
for  a  million  pounds,  which  stand  open,  on  the 
Avords  of  honor  and  faith  of  mutual  memoran- 
dums, that  the  margins  shall  be  deposited  and  the 
contracts  dehvered  on  the  fifth  day  of  August. 

Numerous  parties,  both  in  this  country  and 
Europe,  have  been  negotiating  for  the  large  list  of 
extra  fine  and  fancy  cottons  held  by  Garland's 
house.  He  feels  that,  under  his  contract,  the 
cotton  must  go  to  one  party,  in  one  unbroken  lot. 
The  decline  will  justify  him  in  selling  before  the 
stipulated  time. 

But  the  delivery  and  caring  for  the  one  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars  advanced  to  the  South,  is 
the  grand  difficulty ;  yet  it  is  a  problem  of  easy 
solution  with  a  man  of  Garland's  fertility  in 
creating  resources.  As  he  holds  the  genuine 
receipts  for  every  bale  of  that  list  of  cotton,  he 
may  easily  deliver  it.  Then  it  is  but  necessary 
for  him  to  procure  sufficient  fraudulent  meat 
receipts  to  take  up  one  hundred  thousand  dollars 
of  the  loans  obtained  on  the  spurious  cotton  re- 
ceipts— a  transaction  most  agreeable  AAith  the 
banks — and  then  apply  the  proceeds  of  the  large 
list  in  cancehng  others  of  the  same  obligations. 
In  this  wise,  the  relief  may  be  quickly  found. 

Accordingly,  without  any  delay,  most  favor- 
able arrangements  are  made  for  moving  the  cot- 
ton; the  transaction  is  published;  the  papers  are 
mailed  to  the  South  as  agreed.  In  the  mean- 
time, forty  thousand  dollars  of  cotton  paper  is 
taken  up  with  meat  paper,  and  all  the  necessary 
arrangements  made  for  the  exchange  of  the 
requisite  amount. 

Thus  it  seems  that  another  impending  crisis  is 
passed,  one  more  threatening  danger  averted;  and 
that,  despite  adverse  winds  and  untoward  cir- 
cumstances. Garland  will  yet  safely  land. 

"What  a  fearful  and  horrible  existence!  What 
will  power  it  must  require  to  sustain  a  man  un- 
der  such    circumstances,    even    though   he   has 


WRECKED  ON  THE  STRAND  OF  TIME. 


229 


no  other  cares  to  harass  his  mmd!  How,  then, 
it  is  possible  for  Garland,  burdened  as  he  is  with 
the  management  of  a  large  and  actively  working 
business,  embracing  enormous  and  compH- 
cated  enterprises,  to  pass  through  this  ordeal, 
month  after  month,  without  manifesting  any 
symptoms  of  anxiety,  is  a  deep  mystery.  Every 
breath  he  drew  was  bated  by  the  intensified 
emotion  of  that  feeling  of  suspense  experienced 
by  soldiers  Avhen  advancing  on  a  position  where 
they  think  the  enemy  hes  in  ambush,  and  whence 
they  are  in  momentary  expectation  of  a  withering 
volley — a  thrilling  sensation  never  yet  truly 
portrayed. 


CHAPTER   LXIII. 

WRECKED    ON    THE    STRAND    OF    TIME ! 

"Oh  unexpected  stroke,  worse  than  death!" 

*  *  *  *  *  *  * 

—Milton. 
"  What  am  I?    Nothing  :  but  not  so  art  thou, 

Soul  of  my  thought,  with  whom  I  traverse  earth, 
Invisible,  but  gazing,  as  I  glow. 

Mixed  with  thy  spirit,  blended  with  thy  birth, 
And  feeling   still  with  thee  in  my  crushed  feelings' 
dearth." 

— Bybon. 

Just  as  soon  as  the  announcement  of  the  big 
cotton  transaction  is  made  public,  it  becomes  a 
topic  of  interest  on  the  street  and  in  the  Ex- 
changes, of  mingled  admiration,  jealousy,  envy 
and  hatred.  Almost  all  classes  are  agreed  in  the 
opinion  that  Garland  will  be  "  cornered  "  in  the 
delivery  of  the  cotton,  and  find  himself  unable  to 
transfer  the  ware-house  receipts  for  so  large  a  lot, 
representing  so  much  money,  from  the  banks  to 
the  buyer.  It  is  necessary  for  the  buyer  to  have 
the  receipts  before  he  can  procure  a  bill  of  lading. 
Tliis  he  must  have  in  order  to  negotiate  the  draft, 
enabling  him  to  pay  for  the  property.  This 
buyer  is  himself  one,  who,  as  a  competitor,  will 
not  sympathize  with  Garland,  should  he  become 
embarrassed  in  the  dehvery  of  the  goods. 

From  all  quarters  the  progress  of  the  affair  is 
watched  with  impatient  suspense.  It  is  under- 
stood that  the  buyer  will  demand  in  the  first  in- 
stalment, receipts  to  cover  an  amount  of  one 
hundred  thousand  dollars. 


On  the  morning  of  July  28th,  Garland  is 
duly  notified  that  at  half-past  two  o'clock,  p.m., 
the  receipts  must  be  ready. 

He  is  fully  apprised  of  the  character  of  the  talk 
on  the  streets,  and  the  predictions  that  are  freely 
expressed.  He  therefore,  because  of  his  danger- 
ous position,  experiences  an  increased  feeling  of 
apprehension  for  the  result ;  but  he  has  permitted 
himself  to  be  drawn  into  an  ambuscade  under  an 
enfilading  fire,  and  no  longer  is  able  to  exercise 
discretion,  further  than  to  take  the  chances  of 
running  the  gauntlet.  He  cannot  with  propriety 
recede  from  the  transaction;  for  that  is  now 
impossible. 

He,  however,  grasps  the  idea  that  he  may,  with- 
out any  breach  of  good  faith  and  in  strict  con- 
formity with  commercial  integrity,  assume  a  po- 
sition that  will  provoke  the  buyer  to  repudiate 
the  transaction.  There  are  no  rules  of  the  Ex- 
change relative  to  the  method  of  delivering  and 
receiving  payment  for  cotton.  The  seller  may 
use  his  discretion.  Therefore,  Garland  notifies 
the  buyer  that,  upon  the  surrender  of  the  ware- 
house receipts,  he  must  have  the  money  in  cur- 
rency— a  demand  he  believes  simply  impossible 
for  the  buyer  to  meet.  He  knows  that  there  is 
no  difficulty  about  delivering  the  cotton  receipts ; 
but  he  is,  moreover,  sensible  of  the  danger  it  in- 
volves. But  at  the  appointed  hour,  this  opinion 
notwithstanding,  the  currency  is  ready. 

Now,  Garland  resolves  to  distribute  the  money 
that  same  evening  among  his  banks,  and  take  up 
so  many  receipts  that  no  wild  stories  may  disturb 
the  bank  officers.  By  the  time  the  balance  of 
the  cotton  is  ready  to  deliver,  he  will,  with  the 
money  he  wiU  then  receive,  be  able  to  redeem 
the  last  of  the  spurious  cotton  receipts. 

But  so  much  time  %s  consumed  in  counting  the 
money  and  the  receipts,  that  the  banks  are  all 
closed ;  and  it  is  only  by  chance  that  he  deposits 
the  money  in  the  vault  of  the  bank  nearest  to 
his  office  that  night. 

In  going  home  that  evening,  as  on  all  other 
evenings,  he  will  pass  the  door  of  one  of  his 
other  banks,  just  before  reaching  the  street-car. 

The  sun  is  setting ;  the  atmosphere  is  stifling 
and  oppressively  hot.  As  he  is  about  to  pass  the 
bank,  the  book-keeper,  who  is  standing  in  the 


230 


MYSTIC   EOMANCES   OF   THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


door,  informs  him  that  the  cashier  desires  to  see 
him  a  moment  in  the  office. 

Arriving  at  the  office,  he  is  ushered  into  the 
private  apartment,  where  he  finds  not  only  the 
cashier,  but  also  the  president,  an  attorney  and 
the  cashier  of  another  of  his  banks.  Horrors! 
they  know  his  secret — the  long-caged  mystery 
has  at  last  escaped. 

The  buyer  had  proclaimed  that  he  had  a  large 
numl)er  of  the  receipts  for  which  he  paid  cash, 
and  was,  fi-om  the  ready  facility  with  which  they 
had  been  dehvered  to  him  without  the  participa- 
tion of  a  bank,  somewhat  suspicious  that  there 
was  either  some  mysterious  power  behind  the 
scenes,  or  some  concealed  fraud.  As  neither 
bank  had  delivered  a  receipt  nor  received  a  dol- 
lar of  the  money,  they  were  not  sIoav  to  believe 
the  same. 

The  officers  of  the  two  banks  met  together, 
compared  figures,  and  sent  to  the  ware-house, 
where  they  obtained  the  startling  information 
that  the  entire  stock  of  cotton  held  for  all  parties, 
minus  that  large  hst  then  ordered  out,  was  con- 
siderably less  than  the  number  of  receipts  which 
they  held  for  Garland's  house  alone. 

When  confronted  with  these  facts,  he  does  not 
hesitate  one  moment,  but  states  the  situation  just 
as  it  exists;  tells  them  what  he  has  done  and 
can  do ;  and  that  by  the  first  day  of  September, 
the  last  dollar  will  be  paid,  provided  his  business 
is  allowed  to  remain  undisturbed  by  the  deleteri- 
ous influence  of  that  unpromising  discovery ;  that 
he  will  pay  a  large  amount  the  next  day,  and 
then  steadily  reduce  the  balances  until  the  debt 
is  canceled.  Further,  if  they  deem  a  harsher 
course  more  wise  and  expedient,  they  will  then 
have  to  take  their  chances  amid  the  heterogene- 
ous mass  of  Je6ns  from  the'- wrecks  of  ruin  that 
must  inevitably  ensue. 

During  the  progress  of  this  scene,  on  the  very 
threshold,  as  it  were,  of  a  dungeon's  grim  and 
checkered  grate,  there  is  not  the  slightest  visible 
demonstration  of  emotion  nor  discomposure  dis- 
played by  Garland. 

And  his  proposition  is  accepted  almost  without 
hesitation  or  doubt  as  to  its  fulfillment.  With 
its  acceptance  there  is  vouchsafed  to  him  a  most 
solemn  pledge  that,  provided  he  does  not  fail  to 


redeem  his  proffered  word  of  honor — all  upon 
which  the  banks  now  have  to  rely — the  knowl- 
edge of  his  disreputable  slips  shall  never  pass 
beyond  the  breasts  of  those  who  are  present. 
The  meeting  breaks  up,  and  Garland  goes  on 
home  as  though  it  had  been  no  more  than  an 
ordinary  and  regular  business  affair — that  is,  so 
far  as  is  indicated  by  appearances. 

It  would  seem  that  he  is  Fortune's  favorite  in 
passing  critical  and  dangerous  crises. 

He  owes  these  two  banks  two  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars,  for  which  they  hold  no  vaUd  se- 
curity ;  and  besides  this,  he  owes  a  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars  that  must  be  paid  the  first  of  August, 
four  days  hence. 

The  next  morning  he  meets  his  appointment 
promptly  at  nine  o'clock ;  assists  to  organize  the 
Cotton  Compress  Co. ;  is  elected  a  director,  and 
pays  his  first  assessment  as  a  stockholder  just  as  if 
nothing  at  all  unusual  had  transpired  the  previous 
evening. 

Then,  before  noon,  he  makes  good  his  promise 
to  the  two  banks,  by  paying  them  the  amounts 
stipulated  for  that  day. 

Before  the  close  of  this  day,  however,  the  hori- 
zon grows  dark  with  an  overspreading  cloud  of 
portentous  gloom. 

The  cashier  of  the  other  bank  present  at  the 
time  that  Garland's  uncomfortable  negotiation 
transpired,  broke  his  pledge,  and  informed  the 
vice-president  and  a  leading  director  of  his  bank 
of  the  whole  situation,  and  what  had  been  prom- 
ised. The  vice-president  utterly  disregarded 
the  pledge  of  his  cashier ;  and  without  consulting 
or  notifying  the  other  bank,  he  began  a  vigorous 
course  of  aggression,  and  held  before  Garland's 
eyes  almost  hourly  the  menacing  image  of  a 
felon's  cell  in  the  county  prison. 

At  noon,  on  the  first  day  of  August,  he  informs 
this  banker  that  at  the  opening  of  bank  hours  on 
the  next  day  the  last  dollar  will  be  paid.  Not- 
withstanding this  promise,  and  the  fact  that  in 
four  days  his  bank  has  been  paid  ninety  of  the 
one  hundred  and  tAventy  thousand  dollars  due  it 
by  Garland's  firm,  after  five  o'clock,  p.  M.,  of 
this  same  day  that  vice-president,  who  is  a  mem- 
ber of  a  large  pork-packing  firm,  comes  to  Gai-- 
land's  office  with  an  invoice  made  out  from  Gar- 


WRECKED   ON  THE  STRAND  OF  TIME. 


231 


land's  to  his  firm  for  a  half  a  million  pounds  of 
2:)ork.  He  leaves  it  to  Garland's  option  to  receipt 
the  same  and  transfer  the  property,  or  to  go  to 
prison  that  night.  The  amount  of  balance  that 
his  bank  will  thus  gain  for  one  night  is  onl}' 
about  ten  thousand  dollars. 

Garland  meets  all  his  obligations  maturing  on 
the  first  of  the  month,  and  pays  the  other  bank  a 
large  amount  besides.  But  all  these  things  com- 
bined drive  him  to  such  desperate  straits  that  he 
borrows  fifty  thousand  dollars  on  the  faith  of 
some  of  the  redeemed  worthless  paper. 

On  the  next  morning  he  pays  the  pressing  bank 
the  last  dollar. 

Before  noon,  the  vice-president  has  disclosed 
the  secret  to  the  proper  parties,  for  it  to  be 
quickly  and  fully  advertised. 

This  is  Saturday.'  When  Garland  leaves  his 
office  for  home,  the  other  bank  wants  only  six- 
teen thousand  dollars  of  being  paid  in  full,  and 
that  he  expects  to  pay  on  Monday.  Thus,  in  the 
space  of  five  days,  he  provided  for  three  hundred 
thousand  dollars  ;  and  he  still  owes  a  quarter  of  a 
million  of  money. 

On  Sunday,  Garland's  accustomed  places  in 
church  and  Sabbath-school  are  vacant.  He  suf- 
fers the  stifled  agonies  of  torment  within  the 
charming  seclusion  of  his  own  beautiful  home — 
charms  and  beauties  that,  with  their  enchantments 
and  pleasures,  for  him  are  at  an  end. 

For  hours  he  is  alone  in  the  grand  double  par- 
lors with  the  doors  closed,  curtains  drawn  low, 
and  the  blinds  tuined  down— Manonia  and  the 
other  persons  thinking  he  is  out. 

The  darkened  apartments  and  the  solemnity  of 
their  solitude  are  in  strict  harmonj-  with  the 
thoughts  and  the  emotions  of  this  wretched  man, 
as  he  writhes  unmasked  beneath  the  scourging 
lash  of  retribution. 

From  one  end  of  the  room,  the  stern  features 
of  Lee  and  Jackson,  in  half  life-size  on  their  war 
steeds,  in  the  scene  of  their  last  meeting,  look 
reproachfully  down  upon  him  through  the  misty 
gloom;  while-  on  either  side  are  an  exquisite 
Beatrice  and  a  matchless  Madonna — the  one,  in 
her  consummate  beauty,  seeming  to  gaze  with 
fixed  and  scornful  rebuke ;  the  other,  with  saintly 
pity 


As  he  returns  the  gaze  of  first  one  and  then 
another,  as  his  eye  glances  from  face  to  face  of 
these  his  favorite  paintings,  he  instinctively  ex- 
periences a  sensation  that  inspires  a  strongly 
superstitious  belief  that  in  this  moment,  amid  this 
voiceless  scene,  he  is  receiving  a  presentiment  that 
the  time  is  near  when  they  must  part.  That  this 
is  now  perhaps  the  scene  which  must  be  his  last 
upon  that  stage. 

Now,  pausing  suddenly,  he  exclaims  in  a  voice 
husky  with  emotion,  "  I  swear,  until  I  am  free 
from  these  cursed  chains  of  ignominious  slavery, 
never  again  to  enter  this  palatial  precinct  fraught 
with  such  vivid  perceptions  of  airy  images  conjur- 
ing up  haunting  fancies  from  the  shadowy  realms 
of  the  supernatural,  unknown  and  mystic  worlds. 

"  Oh,  untarnished  names  of  my  brave  chief- 
tains, that  I  was  only  sleeping  that  innocent, 
tranquil,  and  reposing  slumber  with  you !  Fare- 
well !  Since  I  am  unworthy  to  meet  the  inanimate 
semblance  of  j^our  honest  eyes,  I  must  leave  you. 
Farewell,  my  Beatrice!  I  have  no  claims  upon 
you  1  But,  my  Madonna !  can  you  not  teach  me 
how  and  where  to  find  a  balm  to  soothe  my  cure- 
less wounds?  Oh,  thou  image  of  the  saintly 
mother  of  the  true  and  the  good,  farewell!  My 
other  little  treasures,  farewell,  too!  We  shall 
meet  when  I  am  unshackled ;  and  then  I  will  live 
with  you  in  sadness,  or  else  we  are  parting 
for  evermore !  " 

Now  this  miserable  man  stands  for  a  moment  in 
the  door,  while  some  unavailing,  unatoning  tears 
course  their  way  down  his  care-stricken  face  as 
he  gazes  back  into  the  parlors.  Slowly  he  turns 
away,  and  closes  the  door  behind  him. 

After  bathing  his  face  and  eyes,  he  joins  Ma- 
nonia, poor  woman,  who  little  dreams  of  the  ter- 
rible nature  of  that  volcano  smoldering  beneath 
the  brittle,  treacherous  crust  upon  which  the  false 
idol  that  she  so  indiscreetly  enshrined  in  her  pure 
heart,  is  standing.  He  has  never  breathed  one 
word  to  her  of  that  feai-ful  ordeal  through  which 
he  has  been  and  is  still  passing,  nor  to  his  part- 
ners, nor  any  other  person  than  those  who  were 
present  at  that  torturing  interview  of  a  tew  even- 
ings before. 

His  sleep  and  its  visions  this  Sabbath  night  are 


232 


MYSTIC  KOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


no  more  pleasing  than  his  sohtary  exijerience  had 
been  during  the  evening  in  the  parlors. 

Could  words  depict  the  suflferings  of  this  mis- 
erable man  during  six  days  and  seven  nights,  in 
colors  sufficiently  vivid  to  render  them  distinct 
to  the  understanding,  so  that  they  might  be  prop- 
erly estimated  in  a  clear  light — in  the  forcible 
nature  of  their  true  reality — they  would  be  suffi- 
cient by  themselves,  to  say  nothing  of  those 
springing  from  the  same  source  for  months  pre- 
vious to  this  period,  and  which  must,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  continue  to  flow  unabated — to  deter 
any  rational  man  from  incurring  the  risk  of  be- 
coming subject  to  similar  disastrous  consequen- 
ces, for  which  untold  gold,  nor  honors,  nor  power 
could  ever  compensate.  That  deep  midnight  of 
the  mind, where  all  its  ministers  are  but  the  grim- 
visaged  geniuses  of  despair- — could  it  be  possible 
to  picture  it  to  the  world  as  it  is,  it  would  drive 
many  who  are  hovering  about  its  ragged  edges 
away,  so  far  and  so  effectually,  that  they  would 
never  make  the  fearful  plunge  into  its  uninviting 
and  inliospitable  realms,  as  they  are  now  blindly 
ready  to  do — to  rue  their  rashly  mad  act  only 
when  too  late,  when  regrets  will  be  unavailing. 

Long  before  bank  hours  on  Monday  morn- 
ing, Garland  is  apprised  that  scores  of  persons 
know  his  condition ;  and  that  the  tidings  there- 
of are  rapidly  spreading.  He  learns  from  the 
manager  of  a  commercial  agency,  in  person,  that 
his  office  is  already  in  possession  of  the  damaging 
information. 

That  other  creditors  will  learn  this  fatal  truth, 
is  now  beyond  doubt;  but  Garland  believes  that 
he  can  make  a  showing  that  will  insure  an  ami- 
cable adjustment.  Laboring  under  this  impres- 
sion, he  sets  about  writing  letters,  and  doing  other 
things  preparatory  to  the  temporary  modifica- 
tions of  his  plans. 

At  two  o'clock,  p.  M.,  he  draws  eight  thousand 
dollars  in  currency  from  one  bank,  and  from  there 
directs  his  steps  to  another  bank  to  draw  a  like 
amount;  thence  to  pay  the  balance  due  the  bank 
Avhere  he  was  first  confronted  with  the  tangible 
ghost  of  his  Grimes. 

This  bank  acted  with  him  in  strict  conformity 
and  good  faith — true  to  the  pledge  made  l)y  its  offi- 
cers on  that  night.     He  had  paid  the  money  due  it 


so  rapidly,  simply  because  he  had  been  driven  to 
similar  measures  with  the  other  bank  so  much 
sooner  than  stipulated — not  owing  to  any  annoy- 
ance from  its  officers. 

The  first  package  of  eight  thousand  doUars 
is  a  very  large  bundle,  the  bills  all  being  of 
small  denominations.  A  few  blocks  away  from 
his  office  the  package  bursts,  and  he  runs  into 
a  bank  to  obtain  larger  bills.  This  is  nqt  con- 
venient, and  therefore  he  accepts  the  cashier's 
check  for  the  amount,  payable  to  the  order  of 
his  firm.       This  occasions  considerable  delay. 

When  he  arrives  at  the  other  bank  its  currency 
has  been  sent  to  the  Safe  Deposit  Company,  so 
that  after  some  detention,  he  obtains  only  five 
thousand  dollars — several  minutes  after  three 
o'clock. 

Before  he  is  a  block  away  from  this  bank,  he  is 
informed  that  the  little  bank  with  which  he  fii'st 
commenced  to  do  business  has  discovered  the 
true  situation,  since  he  left  his  office,  and  has  in 
this  short  time  placed  the  case  in  the  hands  of 
the  Police  Department ;  and  that  the  officers  are 
already  out  to  arrest  him  and  every  one  connected 
with  his  office. 

He  now  at  this  late  hour  hastens  home  to  ap- 
prise poor  Manonia  of  the  blow  that  is  about  to 
crush  her  hopes.  She  swoons  under  its  weight,  and 
lies  insensible  for  some  time. 

He  tells  her  of  the  other  trouble  through  which 
he  has  been  passing,  and  assures  her  that  he  had 
expected  to  arrange  this  present  one  in  an  hour. 
He  gives  her  the  casliier's  check  and  five  thou- 
sand dollars  currency,  and  tells  her  to  deliver 
them  in  his  absence  to  no  one  but  officers  of  the 
law.  Now  he  seats  himself  on  the  portico  to 
await  the  officers ;  and  he  has  not  many  minutes 
to  Avait, 

In  leaving  the  house  he  tells  Manonia  that  he 
may  return  in  time  for  supper.  She  does  not 
know  that  he  is  iinder  arrest,  as  he  went  down 
stairs  and  met  the  officers  at  the  front-door.  A 
few  moments  later  he  is  at  the  County  prison, 
where  he  finds  his  partners  and  nearly  every  one 
of  his  employes  under  arrest. 

No  terms,  arrangement,  nor  even  propositions, 
will  be  considered  other  than  paying  the  com- 
plaining bank  in  full,  immediately.      Garland  ob- 


WRECKED  ON  THE  STRAND  OF  TUIE. 


233 


stinately  refuses  to  do  anytliing  without  liis  other 
creditors  being  present  as  participants;  but 
states  if  they  are  promptly  summoned  he  will 
make  a  statement,  and  propose  something  for  the 
mutual  security  of  all.  He  unhesitatingly  admits 
that  the  paper  held  by  the  bank  is  worthless,  and 
asserts  that  he  alone  is  to  blame.. 

His  request  to  have  his  other  creditors  sum- 
moned is  treated  with  contemptuous  indignity, 
and  he  is  ordered  to  a  dungeon.  During  the  night 
his  house  is  ransacked,  and  it  is  the  opinion  of 
some  neighbors  who  are  with  Manonia  that  she 
will  not  live  until  morning. 

Now  early  the  next  day  the  arrested  parties,  all 
except  Garland,  are  released.  He  writes  a  card  to 
his  creditors,  in  which  he  asserts  that,  if  released 
at  once  and  permitted  to  remain  at  hberty  even 
under  the  most  rigid  police  surveillance,  no  one 
will  lose  a  dollar.  But  the  authorities  ridicule  the 
idea  ,  and  the  pressing  bank  demands  its  money 
in  full.  This  conceded,  the  officers  of  that  bank 
care  not  what  course  the  other  creditors  pursue. 

On  the  next  night,  the  principal  creditors  meet 
at  the  prison,  and  Garland  states  from  memory 
the  condition  of  the  business  in  which  he  has 
been  engaged. 

The  next  morning,  August  the  6th,  the  papers 
contain  columns  relative  to  this  affair.  One  lead- 
ing journal  says  of  him : 

"  He  is  rather  handsome,  prepossessing,  and  is 
master  of  most  engaging  manners  and  conversa- 
tional powers.  He  was  a  bold  and  daring  officer 
in  the  rebel  army,  where  he  lost  his  arm.  With 
all  his  sins,  he  has  done  more  than  any  other 
man  toward  establishing  a  cotton  market  here 
and  influencing  cotton  to  it.  His  business  talents, 
qualifications,  and  experience  are  extraordinary, 
and  not  often  excelled.  His  entire  business,  em- 
bracing gigantic  and  most  comphcated  transac- 
tions, he  has  at  his  fingers'  ends." 

The  creditors  are  not  able  to  agree  among  them- 
selves. This  results  in  the  matter  going  at  once 
into  bankruptcy. 

A  certain  element  among  the  creditors,  or  some 

of  them,  beheves  that  there  is  a  very  large  sum  of 

money  buried  somewhere,  that  may  be  unearthed. 

Manonia  has  no  money.      The  creditors  seize 

the   house  and   fui'niture:    hence    she  is  forced 


to  vacate,  and  return  to  her  father's  home.  Her 
wardrobe  is  plain,  cheap  and  scanty.  Garland's 
is  not  worth  fifty  dollars,  and  hardly  cost  more 
when  new.  In  that  quarter,  at  least,  no  money 
has  been  squandered. 

As  to  Garland,  he  remains  in  confinement, 
month  after  month,  while  his  assets  are  constantly 
melting  away  under  the  control  of  mexperi- 
enced  hands. 

By  the  fifteenth  of  September,  his  joint  pork 
operations  would  have  realized  a  clear  gain  of 
over  half  a  milhon  of  money. 

All  of  this  stock  that  passed  into  the  hands  of 
the  creditors,  they  sold  at  once,  before  the  large 
advance  was  established.  The  contract  with  the 
parties  concerning  the  large  list  of  cotton  was 
not  carried  out  Ijy  the  creditors,  and  hence  the 
other  side  was  absolved  from  performing  their 
part.  By  some  strange  means,  more  than  two 
hundred  bales  of  cotton  mysteriously  disappeared, 
and  were  never  found.  Some  ten  thousand 
dollars  in  commercial  notes  left  with  a  bank  the 
day  on  which  Garland  was  arrested,  to  be  used 
as  collateral  for  a  loan  to  be  granted  the  next 
day,  vanished ;  and  the  bank  that  issued  the 
eight  thousand  dollar  cashier's  check  for  the 
same  amount  of  currency,  claimed  and  obtained 
this  check  in  the  bankrupt  court.  Thus  that 
amount  was  lost  to  the  creditors. 

Trivial  matters,  such  as  these  just  related, 
would  be  too  small  to  receive  the  sUghtest  con- 
sideration had  they  been  the  work  of  a  man  of 
Garland's  character  and  proclivities.  But  when 
they  lay  at  the  doors  of  great  and  reputable 
financial  institutions,  they  assume  an  aspect  of 
gravely  serious  import,  and  deserve  attention  as 
portraits  of  a  shady  feature  of  the  weakness  of 
human  nature,  even  in  quarters  wdiere  evil  or 
dubious  practices  should  not  only  find  no  place 
to  harbor,  but  should  be  far  above  suspicion. 

While  Garland  is  in  prison  awaiting  the  result 
of  his  legal  destiny,  a  prominent  attorney  and 
member  of  the  State  Senate  one  day  calls  on  him. 
This  gentleman  had  served  with  Garland  as  the 
commanding  officer  of  a  battalion  in  the  same 
brigade  for  four  consecutive  campaigns,  up  to 
the  very  battle  in  which  the  latter  lost  his  arm ; 
I    knew  him  well ;  and  appears  to  remember  him 


234 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


distinctly  as  Cajjt.  G-aiiand,  and  to  recall  the  £act 
that  he  was  promoted  to  the  rank  of  Colonel, 
and  at  the  same  time  transferred  to  a  new  com- 
mand. They  talk  over  their  old  experiences, 
and  they  meet  often  from  this  time  forward. 

After  the  lapse  of  five  months,  the  creditors  are 
forced  to  conclude  that  there  is  nothing  for 
which  to  censure  Garland  but  the  criminal 
irregularities  of  his  bank  negotiations,  and  that 
these  had  not  been  designed  to  defraud  his  vic- 
tims. Otherwise,  there  is  absolutely  nothing 
morally  wrong  to  urge  against  him,  and  no  other 
party  takes  any  share  in  his  prosecution,  except 
the  little  bank  that  had  him  arrested;  and  the 
managers  did  this  persistently  at  first,  as  a 
means  to  secure  the  full  payment  of  their  claim — 
privately. 

Their  plan  was  to  multiply  charges  to  an  extent 
to  render  giving  bail  out  of  the  question,  if  not 
impossible. 

Garland  is  represented  by  fine  criminal  talent 
in  the  legal  ranks.  No  attempt  to  give  bail  is 
ever  made  until  after  the  grand  jury  finally  dis- 
poses of  the  case  by  finding  five  bills  of  indict- 
ment. Upon  these  the  prosecutors  rely  that  the 
amount  of  bail  will  be  fixed  at  not  less  than  fifty 
thousand  dollars;  still,  however,  it  is  fixed  at  five 
thousand;  and  the  comrade  of  the  old  brigarle 
procures  bondsmen. 

The  country  customers  had  not  paid  the  credi- 
tors a  dollar.  When  Garland  is  liberated  the 
cotton  season  is  so  far  advanced  that  the  pros- 
pects for  collecting  are  poor  indeed ;  yet  still  he 
collects  about  five  per  cent,  of  the  amount  due 
his  late  firm  in  the  South. 

He  is  soon  in  business  again,  for  the  sole  pur- 
pose, so  far  as  the  present  is  concerned,  of  trying 
to  collect  for  the  creditors. 

He  makes  a  silent  arrangement  with  two 
brothers,  who  put  up  a  little  money — ^less  than 
one-tenth  of  the  amount  agreed — which  their 
stipulated  salaries  soon  absorb. 

Some  friends  assist  Garland  with  small  sums. 
These  melt  away  in  the  steady  suction  of  una- 
voidable expenses. 

Manonia  returns,  and  they  go  to  humble 
housekeeping.  This  she  in  a  great  measure 
maintains  by  a  laundry. 


A  year  passes.  Garland  is'  making  money, 
handling  unmerchantable  cottons.  For  this  pur- 
pose, soon  he  has  machinery  established. 

But  before  long  he  is  swindled  by  New  York 
and  Philadelphia  parties  on  some  large  lots. 
Then  the  market  suddenly  breaks  doAvn  when  he 
has  a  heavy  stock  on  hand,  and  takes  all  that  he 
has  made,  leaving  him  a  loser  by  several  thousand 
dollars. 

Court  after  Court,  his  case  is  continued  at  the 
solicitation  of  the  creditors  of  the  bankrupt  firm. 
His  bondsmen  die  or  become  insolvent.  The  pros- 
ecutors try  to  have  him  re-arrested,  but  the  Court 
denies  the  motion.  The  prosecuting  bank  in  the 
meantime  fails. 

Nearly  three  years  elapse.  The  creditors, 
through  the  wasting  medium  of  the  Bankru25t 
Court,  after  all  the  shrinkage  and  loss  of  avail 
able  assets  immediatelj^  after  the  crash,  and  the 
loss  of  eighty  per  cent,  of  the  Southern  advances, 
have  been  paid  more  than  fifty  cents  oh  the 
dollar. 

Now  Garland  is  tried  and  convicted.  This 
arouses  the  public.  The  jury,  the  Court,  and  the 
merchants — even  many  of  those  who  had  always 
been  his  enemies, — the  cottoji  presses  and  ship- 
ping interest,  protest  against  the  execution  of 
sentence.  In  consequence  of  this,  he  is  a  few 
days  thereafter  pardoned  without  ever  leaving 
the  jail,  before  he  is  sentenced  by  the  Court. 

Had  the  curse  of  the  past,  which  had  pursued 
him  so  many  years,  been  as  effectuallj'  obliteratd 
as  the  one  of  the  present,  there  might  have  been 
still  hope  on  earth  for  him. 

About  this  time  a  cotton  house  fails,  with  some 
of  his  funds  on  hand;  and  just  two  weeks  after 
his  release  from  jail,  his  cotton  estabhshment  and 
machiner}^  burn,  only  partially  insured.  After 
long  and  tedious  delay,  adjustments  and  settle- 
ments are  made. 

Now  Garland  arranges  to  re-build  not  only  the 
destroyed  works,  but  to  build  in  addition  thereto 
an  extensive  factory,  all  to  be  completed  by  the 
first  of  September. 

While  this  is  progressing,  the  largest  bank  in 
the  city  fails,  with  every  dollar  he  has  to  pay  his 
workmen.  But  he  is  assisted  after  some  delay, 
and  continues  the  work. 


WKECKED  ON  THE   STRAND  OF  TIME. 


235 


It  was  necessary  to  buy  and  store  cotton  to  run 
on  for  three  months.  This  is  bought  through  ad- 
vances from  a  few  friends  and  a  bank,  with  the 
understanding  that  the  works  will  be  in  operation 
on  or  before  September  the  first.  Just  as  soon  as 
they  are  pi'epared  to  start,  there  is  a  partner  ready 
with  all  the  money  that  can  be  used. 

In  August,  Manonia  goes  on  a  visit  to  her 
father. 

There  are  constant  delays  and  disappointments 
about  the  completion  of  machinery.  September 
finds  the  works  far  from  completion.  The  Sep- 
tember delivery  of  cotton  arrives.  Cotton  begins 
to  decline.  Everything  is  contrary.  The  bank 
wants  its  money ;  so  do  some  other  parties. 

The  morning  of  the  eighteenth  of  September 
comes.  The  machinists  are  positive  that  the 
works  could  start  on  the  twenty-fifth  of  the 
month.  Garland  is  satisfied  they  may  start  by 
October  the  first,  at  the  farthest. 

On  this  day — September  the  eighteenth — G-ar- 
land  is  notified  that  the  contemplated  partner  has 
reconsidered  the  matter,  and  determined  not  to 
embark  in  the  enterprise. 

Tliis  information  is  a  death-knell  to  G-arland, 
that  tolls  the  distracting  tocsin  of  despair,  which 
he  at  once  resolves  to  stifle  in  the  terrible  act  of 
self-destruction. 

He  is  now  thoroughly  satisfied  that  he  can 
neither  escape  the  cruel  consequences  of  his  ever- 
pursuing  curse,  nor  obtain  any  measure  of  re- 
demption from  it  in  this  world:  and  that,  no 
matter  what  the  nature  of  the  enterprise  in  which 
he  embarks,  nor  however  true  the  fidelity  and 
undeviating  the  honesty  of  purpose  with  which 
he  follows,  the  result  will  be  failure  and  ruin, 
let  the  mortal  encouragment  and  support  be 
what  they  may.  He  is  forced  to  beUeve,  and  the 
conviction  perpetually  haunts  him,  that  to  this 
source  is  due  all  the  unaccountable  forces  of  un- 
friendly opposition  and  unnatural  difficulties  that 
he  encountered  in  every  honorable  move  he  at- 
tempted to  make  in  the  past. 

He  sets  about  making  preparations  for  the  dark 
exit  with  methodical  system. 

A  plan  of  the  works  is  drafted,  and  expHcit  de- 
tails are  written.  All  the  remainder  of  that  day 
and  all  night  he  is  thus  employed. 


He  has  between  five  and  six  hundred  dollars, 
all  told. 

Some  time  previous  to  this,  he  borrowed  five 
hundred  dollars  from  a  poor  widow,  and  was  to 
give  lier  children  employment  when  the  works 
were  comp^jited.  Early  next  morning,  he  goes, 
and  returns  her  money. 

He  is  wearing  a  very  fine  gold  watch  and  chain, 
the  property  of  Manonia,  a  present  from  her 
father  in  the  prosperous  age  before  the  war,  when 
she  was  a  happy  girl. 

He  seeks  a  friend,  and  borrows  two  hundred 
dollars ;  then  he  registers  a  chattel  mortgage  on 
his  household  effects  in  favor  of  that  friend,  and 
sends  the  money  and  her  watch  to  Manonia. 
Now  he  pays  to  his  housekeeper  the  small 
amount  due  her,  and  leaves  whatever  balance 
there  is  remaining  in  the  bank.  These  things 
consume  all  the  forenoon;  now  he  goes  home. 

The  afternoon  he  passes  writing  to  Manonia  and 
her  family.  He  tells  her  that  but  for  her  his 
dreadful  end  would  not  be  so  painful  and  bitter ; 
but  expresses  the  hope  that  she  may  be  happier 
with  her  people,  whom  she  loves  so  much,  than 
she  had  ever  been  with  him.  Asserts  that  he  has 
been  so  long  estranged  and  so  widely  banished 
from  happiness  that  it  is  utterly  impossible  for 
him,  under  any  state  of  circumstances,  to  have 
rendered  her  happy ;  and  beyond  human  power 
for  him  to  avoid  causing  her  misery  as  unending 
as  life  itself;  that  he  is  thankful  they  had  no 
children  to  inherit  his  shame ;  that  he  has  made 
life  a  failure ;  and  he  entreats  her  to  forget,  as  he 
knows  that  she  could  never  forgive  him.  He 
closes  this  cruel  letter  with  these  pathetic  and 
melancholy  lines : 

"  Fare  thee  well— thus  disunited. 
Torn  from  every  nearer  tie ; 
Seared  in  heart  and  lone  and  blighted — 
More  than  this — I  scarce  can  die." 

Sadly,  tenderly,  he  bids  the  little  inanimate  ob- 
jects about  the  house  farewell;  and  just  as  the 
sun  is  setting,  he  leaves  the  house,  with  his  vial 
of  potent  bane-forever.  Now  he  hastily  bends 
his  steps  in  the  direction  of  some  old  coal-fields 
just  beyond  the  suburbs  of  the  city,  among  which 
he  had  once  lived,  where  he  knows  of  an  accessi- 


236 


MYSTIC  EOMANCES   OF   THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


ble  cavern,  in  whicli  he  designs  to  lind  a  lonely 
death-bed  and  an  uukuown  orave. 

AMID    THE    DARK    CAVERNS    GLOOM.' 

This  woe-begone,  self-abandoned,  God-forsaken 
Avretch,  by  the  aid  of  the  dimly  flickering  light 
of  a  small  waxen  taper,  which  he  lights  on  arriv- 
ing at  the  mouth  of  the  cave,  penetrates  to  the 
dark  and  dismal  recess  of  its  dreary  depths,  sets 
the  little  luminary  in  the  niche  of  a  rock,  and 
repeats  these  most  impressive  lines  from  Cato's 
soliloquy. 

"Eternity!  thou  pleasing,  dreadful  thouglit ! 
Through  what  variety  of  untried  being, 
Through  what  new  scenes  and  changes  must  we  pass? 
The  wide,  the  unbounded  prospect  lies  before  me, 
But  shadows,  clouds,  and  darkness  rest  upon  it. 
I  am  weary  of  conjectures.    This  must  end  them. 
Thus  am  I  doubly  armed ;  my  death  and  life. 
My  bane  and  antidote  are  both  before  me; 
Tfiis  in  a  moment  brings  me  to  an  end  : 
But  this  informs  me  I  shall  never  die. 
The  soul  secured  in  her  existence  smiles 
At  the  drawn  dagger,  and  defies  its  point. 
The  stars  shall  fade  away,  the  sun  himself 
Grow  dim  with  age,  and  nature  sink  in  years 
But  thou  Shalt  flourish  in  immortal  youth. 
Unhurt  amid  the  war  of  elements. 
The  wreck  of  matter  and  the  crash  of  worlds !  " 

"Oh,  alas,  that  the  remorse  of  the  coward, 
Conscience,  should  have  brought — nay,  driven  me 
to  this  fearful  extremity!  This  is  the  last  fell 
stroke  of  the  Avenger's  scourging  lash.  What 
a  terrible  penalty !  What  a  sad  expiation !  All, 
all  alone,  here  must  I  die. 

"  How  many  years  I  have  escaped  this  last 
fiendish  wrath  of  the  curse,  through  prolonged 
and  oft  wellnigh  intolerable  torture,  only  ulti- 
mately to  taste  its  poignant  bitterness !  How  I 
have  blindly  struggled  to  avert  the  pangs  of  this 
unhallowed  act,  the  mystic  witnesses  of  the  super- 
natural realms  alone  know ! 

"  That  heaven  which  I  can  never  enter,  bears 
me  testimony  that  the  thirsty  cravings  of  my 
wretched  heart  have  ever  been  to  be  true  and  good, 
— boons  of  honor  and  purity  to  me  forbidden,  be- 
cause my  life  and  name  were  perverted  and  false 
— a  prolific  curse,  that  from  a  little  germ  to  a  huge 
monster  grew. 

"0  Earth!  with  all  thy  maddening  delusions 
and  vain  strifes,  thy  trials,  disappointments,  and 


heart-aches ;  and  thou,  blessed  Sun !  that  often- 
times gladdens  the  crushed  heart;  and  thou,  0 
Moon !  luminary  of  darkness ;  and  ye  bright  little 
stars!  infalhble  guides  to  the  despau-ing  mariner 
adrift  on  the  wide  waste  of  waters,  and  to  the 
wanderer  astray  in  the  trackless  desert  or  in  the 
pathless  wilderness — and  all  things  that  are  beau- 
tiful and  good, — farewell !  Ah,  yes,  farewell ! 
forever  farewell ! 

"My  God!  whither,  whither  shall  I  fly? 

"0  Heaven!  0  Saviour!  Have  mercy  on 
my  poor  soul,  that  has  ever  abhorred  my  false 
and  wayward  life!  Spare  it,  then,  from  the 
eternal  doom  of  a  never-ending  hell,  and  let  it 
expiate  in  some  definite  ages  of  purgation,  I 
jjray,  for  the  sins  of  a  life  in  which  it  never 
found  dehght.  Lord,  if  it  be  thy  good  pleasure, 
grant  me  a  doom  less  severe  than  I  deserve ! 

"  Thou  subtile,  life-severing  potion!  what  dis- 
mal affinity  the  ghostly  shadows  of  this  dreary 
pit  bear  to  thy  dark  potency.  Swift  be  thy 
surceasing  course,  to  still  with  speed  the  now 
feebly  throbbing  currents  of  my  despairing  life ! 

"How  tasteless! — as  but  a  harmless  draught 
of  water.  But  ah,  my  fingers  and  my  toes 
tingle  as  though  their  nerves  had  been  distended 
and  suddenly  relaxed.  My  heart  throbs  with 
stifling  palpitation.  Ah,  my  senses  vanish! 
The  death  bells  ring  in  my  ears !  I  sink !  It  is  all 
over!  I  die!  Lord  be  merciful!  Spare — spa " 


CHAPTER   LXIV. 

MORE    EVIL    FKUIT    AND    ITS    CONSEQUENCES. 

"  Retribution  thus  decreeth  : 
What  thou  dost  to  others  mete, 

Shall  to  thee  again  be  meted  ; — 
Sowing  tares,  ye  reap  not  wheat." 

— M.  A.  Billings. 

From  the  time  of  Samuel  Tan  Allen's  disagree- 
able and  disastrous  complication  with  Madam 
Mountjoy,  resulting  from  his  contemplated  in- 
trigue with  one  of  her  daughters,  the  hand  of  an 
nnpropitious  Destiny  appeared  to  be  ever  against 
him.  Prosperity  vanished  from  him  as  a  flitting 
shadow,  which  seemed  perpetually  reflected  in 
mocking  derision  from    the  frowning  brow    oi 


MORE  EVIL  FRUIT  AND  ITS  CONSEQUENCES. 


237 


angry  Fortune.  His  affairs  became  more  and  more 
straitened,  and  caused  him  continually  increasing 
embarrassment. 

At  first  he  adopted,  as  an  expedient,  the  un- 
healthy system  of  "commercial  killing."  This 
in  itself  was  shameful  business  faith,  closeh' 
bordering  on  criminal  hypocrisy. 

As  this  sickly  practice  invariably  leads  from 
bad  to  worse,  it  alone  could  not  long  serve  his 
turn.  Soon  it  became  necessary  for  him  to  re- 
sort to  jjrevarication,  and  grossly  to  misrepresent 
his  condition,  in  order  to  strengthen  that  treach- 
erous and  pusillanimous  support  upon  which  he 
leaned,  and  which  alone  upheld  the  'tottering 
Avails  of  his  failing  structure. 

When  a  merchant  or  other  person  occupying  a 
position  in  the  world  in  which  public  confidence 
is  reposed,  and  in  which  public  interest  might  be 
jeopardized,  advances  thus  far  on  the  road  lead- 
ing to  black  and  damnable  dishonor,  he  has,  no 
matter  how  unconscious  of  the  fact  he  is  or  how 
widely  far  his  intentions  are  therefrom,  become 
the  helpless  slave  of  circumstances,  and  is  hope- 
lessly shackled  with  all  the  degrading  chains 
thereto  appertaining. 

Such  was,  in  the  naturally  true  course  of 
events,  the  miserable  predicament  in  which  Van 
Allen  found  himself  engulfed. 

His  family  was  as  old  as  the  city  itself,  and  its 
escutcheon  was  untarnished  by  one  stain  of  re- 
proach. He  was  a  churchman  of  high  standing 
and  influence  in  the  very  first  order  of  congrega- 
tions of  the  most  prominent  church  in  the  great 
metropolis  of  New  York.  His  own  household 
was  all  that  education,  culture,  refinement,  social 
position,  purity  and  piety  could  make  it.  To 
Lim  it  was  devoted  to  the  verge  of  a  fondly 
cherished  idolatry — an  interesting,  a  promising, 
liopeful,  happy  little  circle,  which  never  dreamed 
that  the  husband  and  father  was  faithless  to  his 
own  family,  and  false  to  that  piety  which  he 
professed. 

Here  was  a  man  with  the  priceless  heritage  of 
family  honor ;  the  most  tenderly  endearing  ties 
of  the  present;  the  powerful  influences  of  re- 
ligion and  public  confidence  to  restrain  him,  to 
conjure  him — nay,  more :  almost,  as  it  were,  to 
bind  him  Avith  hallowed  chains  of  golden  purity, 


far  and  securely  away  from  devious  and  forbidden 
paths,  steadily,  systematically,  surely  rushing  on- 
ward, and  ever  nearer  and  nearer  still,  to  the 
brink  of  perdition. 

How  could  he  stoop  to  porvert  all  this  enviable 
and  bounteous  wealth,  to  subserve  the  masked 
phantom  of  the  basest  infamy  ?  How  turn  away 
from  the  sweet  and  delicate  charms  of  a  pure 
and  confiding  wife,  to  bask  in  the  cold,  hollow, 
mocking,  deceptive  smiles  of  a  heartless,  imperi- 
ous, unmerciful  and  cruel  mistress  ?  Oh,  how 
could  he  thus  lavish  his  treasure  and  sacrifice  his 
honor  on  that  deadly  shrine  of  reeking  lust? 
How  turn  nis  back  upon  that  home  of  love  and 
that  church  of  redeeming  salvation,  to  face  a  grim  ' 
and  cheerless  pile  of  unpitying  granite,  and  in  it  a 
living  tomb  behind  a  dreary,  solitary  dungeon's 
hope-excluding  bars  ? 

However,  he  all  this  conjecture  founded  as  well 
as  it  may,  that  was,  notwithstanding,  the  identi- 
cal course  pursued  by  Samuel  Van  Allen.  It  was 
but  a  step  from  conjugal  infidelity  and  hypocrisy 
to  crime.    Soon  he  was  a  forger  and  an  embezzler. 

With  this  fatal  step  began  a  life  of  mental  tor- 
ture, such  as  only  a  man  who  has  staked  so  much 
in  a  desperate  game  can  know.  The  church,  his 
home,  and  all  their  endearing  and  sacred  associa- 
tions, were  but  purgatory  to  him.  The  gilded 
perfumed  boudoir  of  his  mistress  was  an  earthly 
hell,  to  which  he  seamed  bound  by  adamantine 
chains. 

Deeper  and  deeper  grew  the  sucking  quicksand 
of  his  thralldom. 

His  mind  became  abstracted,  and  his  deport- 
ment listless;  his  face  haggard  and  careworn — he 
was  a  hopeless  wreck  of  his  former  self. 

His  family  and  friends  were  alarmed  with  fear 
lest  there  was  some  strange  and  incurable  malady 
slowly  but  surely  sapping  his  vitals.  Ah,  how 
prophetic  were  their  conjectures;  but  how  far 
from  the  true  source  of  his  wasting  leprosy  was 
directed  so  much  as  the  shade  of  suspicion  ! 

Remorse  of  conscience  was  unceasingly  gnaw- 
ing at  his  heart-strings ;  and  the  shadow  of  that 
most  terrible  of  all  spectres,  "  the  ghost  of  jus- 
tice," haunted  him  day  and  night.  Every  face 
he  beheld  on  the  street  turned  toward  him  as  if 
to  cast  a  scrutinizing  glance  ;  every  step  he  heard 


238 


IklYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AXD  THE  GEEl. 


on  the  floor  seemed  as  if  approaching  his  office  ; 
and  every  time  his  door-bell  rang  he  involuntarily- 
started,  and  shuddered  at  the  bare  fancy  that 
there  was  the  inexorable  pursuer,  ready  to  grasp 
him  with  the  heavy  and  relentless  hand  of  the 
law. 

Thus  hours — long,  irksome,  tedious  hours  of 
agonizing  suspense,  dragged  themselves  away, 
each  in  itself  an  age  of  torture,  until  they  were 
multiplied  into  years. — What  a  life ! 

All  things  in  this  world,  sooner  or  later,  come 
to  an  end,  so  did  this  feature  of  Van  Allen's  doom 
of  torment. 

One  morning  he  leaves  home  as  usual.  This 
day  his  long-time  apprehensions  are  realized.  The 
heavy  hand  is  upon  him.  He  finds  himself,  at 
last,  fast  bound  in  the  toils  of  Justice.  The  Aven- 
ger, with  his  chastening  rod  of  retribution,  has 
overtaken  him. 

He  is  conducted  to  the  bar  of  the  Court  with- 
out delay,  to  plead  to  indictments  which  have 
already  been  found  against  him.  He  pleads 
guilty.  This  evening  the  sun  sets  upon  the  walls 
of  a  prison,  within  which  he  is  decked  with  the 
striped  insignia  of  his  shame. 

But  the  home — ah  the  home !  The  sun  sets 
upon  a  home  of  despair,  in  which  the  star  of  hojje 
has  gone  down  forever.  The  curse  that  fol- 
lows the  wrong-doer  has  entered,  wreaking  its 
unmitigated  vengeance  upon  innocent  heads. 

The  poor  wife  is  smitten  with  a  piercing  stroke 
of  frenzy,  from  which  she  never  rallies,  but  be- 
comes a  raving  maniac.  The  amiable  daughter 
is  stricken  by  the  venomous  shaft,  and  soon  dies 
heart-broken;  and  the  tidings  are  ere  long  wafted 
up  from  the  asylum  that  the  mother,  too,  is  dead. 

Then  the  Executive  deems  that  the  author  of  all 
this  woe  and  death  has  drained  the  cup  of  retri- 
bution to  the  last  bitter  dregs,  and  pardons  the 
murderer,  to  give  him  an  opportunity  of  attend- 
ing his  victim's  funeral.  What  a  spectacle  I  What 
a  terrible  warning !  Let  us  draw  the  veil  over 
the  heart-sickening  scene. 


CHAPTER   LXIV. 

THE      wanderer's      RETURN. 

"  Break,  break,  break, 

Ou  thy  cold,  grey  stones,  oh  sea! 
But  the  tender  grace  of  a  day  that  Is  dead 
Will  never  come  back  to  me." 

— Texxtson. 

The  blighting  frosts  have  transformed  the  deep 
green  foliage  of  Virginia's  fair  landscajjes  into  a 
robe  of  sere  and  yellow,  golden  and  brown  and 
red — a  variegated  coat  of  many  colors.  The  chill- 
ing winds  pelt  fiercely  upon  this  fantastic  mantle  of 
the  forest,  and  steadily  rend  it  into  shreds,  cover- 
ing the  ground  with  its  beauteous  fragments. 

Here  and  there  may  be  seen,  now  and  then,  a 
grand  old  sentinel  of  departed  centuries  with  his 
majestic  Kmbs  denuded. 

Amid  tliis  solemn,  impressive  scene  of  Nature, 
in  which  all  things  wear  the  melancholy  imprint 
of  death,  on  the  lofty  summit  of  an  old  field,  on 
a  branch  of  the  Blue  Ridge  Range,  there  might  be 
seen,  just  before  noon,  a  lone,  travel-weary  indi- 
vidual. Here,  standing  with  head  bare  and  the 
wind  playing  with  his  long  hair  and  beard,  he  is 
gesticulating  wildly  and  addressing  the  panorama 
which  spreads  in  undulating  waves  far  away  all 
round  him,  until  the  outlines  are  lost  in  the  misty 
curtain  of  blue,  with  that  emotional  vehemence 
that  animated  beings  are  wont  to  insj^ire.  He 
personifies  all  upon  which  he  gazes,  as  he  thus 
casts  his  words  forth  upon  the  wings  of  the 
wind : 

"  Oh  my  own,  my  native  blue  mountains !  rag- 
ged crags  and  heaven-ward  towering  peaks!  And 
oh,  ye  murmuring,  sleepless  cascades  and  thunder- 
ing cataracts !  do  I  once  again  behold  you,  fondly 
cherished  scenes  of  childhood's  blissful  dreams, 
Avith  my  open  eyes,  unchanged  by  wrinkles  of 
the  heavily  journeying  years  and  unscathed  by 
war,  the  same  as  when  I  bid  you  farewell  long, 
long  years  ago — long  though  not  very  many? 
Oh,  how  sad  and  ominous  was  that  parting !  Ten 
thousand  times  more  bitter  and  joyless  is  this 
meeting ! 

"Oh  mountains!  here  is  thy  long-absent  and 
wandering  son;  from  Avar's  wasting  flames,  the 


THE  WANDERER'S  RETURN. 


239 


perils  of  the  deep,  and  Death's  haunted  vallej's 
found  in  traversing  earth,  covered  with  shame, 
steeped  in  crime's  thrice  crimsoned  dye,  all  un- 
worthy to  receive  thy  greeting  smile.  Nor  man, 
nor  thee,  nor  Heaven  will  wash  from  my  dese- 
crated brow  its  brand  of  burning  ignominy.  I 
left  thee,  young,  and  brave,  and  pure,  and  true. 
T  return  prematurely  aged,  and  cringing,  and  de- 
filed, and  false.  Times  unnumbered  have  I  pined 
to  stand  here  as  I  stand  now.  Ah !  in  dreams, 
on  the  unfriendly  shores  of  foreign  lands,  have  I 
stood  here  as  in  the  by-gone  time,  with  a  thrill  of 
hope ;  but  now  that  emotion  is  unknown.  Would 
that  I  had  not  come  ! 

"Oh!  But  in  yonder  valley,  in  that  farm-house 
once  dwelt  my  mother.  My  mother,  oh  my 
mother!  are  you  there  now?  Like  the  mount- 
ains and  the  brooks,  do  you  still  live  ?  or,  Hke  the 
leaves  of  the  forest,  have  you  withered  and 
fallen  ?  " 

He  now  picks  up  his  hat,  and  with  slow  and 
hesitating  steps  approaches  the  house. 

At  the  house  there  is  a  crowd  of  tlie  neighbors 
gathered,  as  it  is  Sunday — a  custom  much  in  vogue 
in  many  rural  districts  of  the  Southern  States. 

The  stranger  arrives,  is  invited  in,  and  accepts 
a  seat;  but  no  one  recognizes  him. 

More  than  sixteen  years  have  elapsed  since  he 
left  that  home  circle,  a  beardless  boy.  For  ten 
years  he  has  been  mourned  as  dead ;  is  really 
well  nigh  forgotten.  But  still  he  is,  nevertheless, 
in  his  father's  house,  and  beholds  the  well-re- 
membered faces  of  both  father  and  mother,  some 
of  his  sisters,  and  a  few  of  the  guests. 

All  traces  of  the  wild  excitement  of  a  few 
moments  before  have  disappeared,  and  his  face 
lias  assumed  an  expression  of  listless  stoicism. 
No  one  would  guess  the  wildly  conflicting  emo- 
tions now  warring  in  his  breast.  At  last  one  of 
his  sisters  says : 

"  Does  no  one  know  Garland  Cloud  ?  " 

She  is  right.  After  long  and  silent  absence, 
the  erratic  wanderer  is  again  at  the  home  of  his 
tender  years  and  unsullied  innocence,  whence  the 
ebbing  tidal  wave  has  rolled  him  back. 

The  story  of  the  past  appears  fraught  with 
bitter  memories,  that  seem  to  conjure  up  the  most 
excruciating  anguish. 


He  has  no  money,  no  purpose,  no  prospect,  no 
hope ;  and  is  subject  to  fits  of  melancholy  and  de- 
spondency that  often  last  for  hours,  during  which 
time  he  lies  on  the  ground  in  some  secluded  spot, 
thinking — thoughts  that  his  God  and  himself 
alone  will  ever  know. 

Months,  the  entire  winter,  pass  away.  He  is 
so  much  enfeebled  that  he  rarelj^  ever  goes  beyond 
his  father's  premises. 

Garland  Cloud  has  one  unmarried  sister  who 
was  a  little  girl  when  he  left  home.  During  his 
aljsence,  she  has  bloomed  to  mature  and  charming 
womanhood. 

His  gloomy  abstractions  touch  her  tender  and 
sympathetic  heart.  She  yet  remembers  him  as 
she  saw  him  the  last  day  ut  the  Mountain  Mead- 
ows, and  vanishing  the  next  morning  like  a  spec- 
tre through  the  shadows  of  the  grey  twilight,  a 
proud,  true,  pure,  and  noble  youth.  And  she 
again  remembers  the  dread  story,  as  mild  frag- 
ments of  it  reached  her  father's  home  through  the 
mails,  of  his  blighted  hopes  and  reputed  end;  and 
her  year?  of  mourning,  such  as  none  but  a  sister 
or  a  mother  may  know,  for  the  lost  son  or 
brother. 

Also  she  remembered  the  sweet,  angelic,  more 
than  sister  mourner,  who  with  her  had  sorrowed 
many  days  in  the  meek  resignation  of  incurable  de- 
spair as  they  again  and  again  together  mingled 
their  tears,  and  each  on  the  other's  neck  wept 
in  true  sisterly  love— Maimle  Cloud  and  Carrie 
Harman. 

And  she  pities  her  brother  with  the  keen 
sensation  generated  by  a  yearning  to  alleviate  a 
bane  for  which  there  is  no  antidote — a  senti- 
ment whose  only  fountain  is  the  heart  of  pure 
innocence. 

In  graphic  strains  of  melting  pathos  she  re- 
counts to  him  the  pitiful  story  of  the  mournful 
lamentations  of  Carrie  Harman.  Thus  for  the 
first  time  he  has  forced  upon  him  the  overwhelm- 
ing conviction  that  "  The  Angel  of  Consolation," 
the  dream  of  his  youthful  days,  the  idol  of  his 
shadowy  manhood,  the  queen  of  his  earthly 
hopes,  and  the  genius  of  his  mortal  despair,  had 
loved  him  with  a  regally  royal  adoration  that 
shamed  his  own  cowardly  inconstancy  that  in- 
duced  and  permitted  him  to   wring  her  heart. 


240 


MYSTIC   ROMANCES   OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


blast  her  hopes,  and  veil  her  Ufa  in  a  shroud  of 
sombre  sadness.  This  adds  fresh  pangs  to  his 
excruciating  agonies,  which  were  before  all  but 
unbearable. 

G-radually  the  guileless  little  sister  artfully  seeks 
to  draw  from  her  disconsolate  brother  the  story 
of  his  wanderings.  For  months  she  never  per- 
mits  him  out  of  her  sight  many  minutes  at  a 
time.  Wherever  he  goes,  she  is  by  his  side,  striv- 
ing to  console  and  lure  him  away  from  the  terri- 
ble thralldom  in  which  he  is  a  prey  to  his  own 
dark  mind. 

After  a  long  time,  when  spring  has  come,  the 
flowers  are  on  the  hills,  and  the  birds  are  singing 
in  the  tender  foliage  of  the  forest,  he  sits  with  his. 
sister  amid  the  charming  sweetness  of  a  sylvan 
grove,  just  as  it  has  sprung  from  Nature,  deep  in 
the  wilds  of  an  unpruned  mountain  wilderness, 
and  says : 

"Ah!  my  sweet  sister,  if  you  knew  the  bitter 
and  inexpressible  sadness  which  entwines  about 
the  memories  of  the  past,  you  would  not  impor- 
tune me  with  such  subtle  suasion  to  recall  and 
recount  my  untold  miseries  to  you. 

"But,  oh!  my  sissie,  with  the  afflicting  yet 
thrice-blessed  name  of  Carrie  Harman  is  the  very 
quintessence  of  my  unhappy  life  blended.  Of 
the  cruel  depth  of  this  fearful  truth,  God  alone  in 
heaven  can  ever  know  the  unutterable  reality. 

"  From  the  moment  I  was  rescued  from  my 
watery  shroud  up  to  this  hour,  go  where  I  would, 
do  what  I  might,  the  ghost  of  Carrie  Harman 
haunted  me,  haunts  me  still,  will  haunt  me  ever. 

"  Life  ceased  to  have  a  charm  for  me.  There 
is  scarcely  a  danger  on  the  earth  or  the  deep  to 
which  I  have  not  recklessly  exposed  myself ;  yet, 
with  rare  exceptions,  in  maddening  strifes  in  the 
battle  of  hfe,  designed  to  benefit  the  human  race, 
I  thought  that  thus  to  die  would  be  no  suicide. 

"But  some  mysterious  providence  seemed  to 
preserve  me.  I  was  never  sick  among  even  the 
most  scourging  epidemics;  no  other  danger 
harmed  me. 

"  I  traversed  Mexico  and  the  South  American 
States  amid  brigands  and  savage  hosts ;  made  and 
lost  moderate  fortunes.  I  have  been  in  many 
enterprises,  and  hved  for  many  years  at  the  same 
place. 


"One  of  the  saddest  and  most  unfoi-tunate 
transactions  in  which  I  became  involved  was 
getting  married.  Except  Carrie  Harman,  this  is 
the  most  painful  memory  of  my  distorted  and  ill- 
starred  life — something  that  created  an  endless 
but  unavaihng  regret. 

"  Why  I  married,  I  am  unable  to  explain.  I 
suppose  I  was  mad.  I  did  not  love  as  man  should 
love.    This  was  impossible. 

"The  photograph  about  which  you  have  asked 
me  so  many  questions  was  hers.  She  was  as 
good  as  she  was  beautiful — both  as  beautiful  and 
as  good  as  Carrie  Harman.  She  loved  me  blindly 
— my  lost  and  unhappy  bride !  A  loss  I  must  ever 
mourn;  a  bereavement  that  no  words  can  ever 
portray.  It  is  a  theme  much  too  painful  to  think 
about  seriously;  too  agonizing  to  discuss.  Pray 
spare  me  the  torture  which  further  details  would 
inflict. 

"  Oh  that  I  could  tear  this  distressing  memory 
from  my  mind,  which  is  prone  upon  it  forever  to 
dweU. 

"I  beg  of  you,  now,  my  good  sister,  do  not 
again  recall  this  sorrowful  subject.  I  would  for- 
get it,  forget  Carrie  Harman — all  connected  Avith 
the  past — that  I  have  ever  lived,  and  start  life  over 
anew,  if  such  were  possible." 

Cloud  makes  money  during  the  summer  sell- 
ing goods  b}'  sample  on  commission. 

In  the  fall  he  is  selected  as  an  advance  agent 
for  a  colony. 

And  now  once  more  he  bids  adieu  to  his  native 
hills  to  enter  upon  new  and  varied  scenes.  This 
time,  perhaps,  he  turns  his  back  to  the  enchanting, 
spell-binding  views  of  the  mystic  Blue  Mountains 
forever.  But  his  face  is  to  the  restless  surge  of 
the  deep,  blue  Atlantic,  and  his  frail  bark  is  again 
launched  on  the  seething  waves  of  the  tempestu- 
ous sea  of  life — a  mystery  to  all  the  world — almost 
to  himself. 


WHERE  THE  PALMETTO  BUDS  AND  THE  MAGNOLIA  BLOOMS.       241 


CHAPTER  LXVI. 

WHERE     THE    PALMETTO     BUDS     AND      THE     MAGNOLIA 
BLOOMS. 

"  Let  us  go  where  the  wild  flowers  bloom, 
Amid  the  soft  dews  of  the  night, 
Whore  the  orauge  dispels  its  peri'ume. 
And  the  rose  speaks  of  love  and  of  light." 

—Sentimental  Song. 

Garland  Cloud  soon  finds  himself  under  the 
genial  sunshine  and  dreamland  skies  of  the  Italy 
of  America — the  land  of  the  orange  and  the  rose, 
where  the  blight  of  winter  is  unknown  ;  where 
zephyrs  fragrant  with  rare  and  dehcate  per- 
fumes forever  sip  and  waft  odors  from  never- 
fading  flowers;  where  plants  and  fruits  of  every 
clime  will  grow;  where,  in  a  thousand  spots, 
may  be  found  more  than  the  fabled  vale  of 
Vaucluse;  where,  more  than  elsewhere,  there  is 
a  paradise  on  earth ;  where  blushing  Nature 
blooms  in  eternal  spring-time  and  reproduces  the 
grand  and.  matchless  enchantments  of  our  imaged 
G-arden  of  Eden — oftentimes  creating  a  veritable 
ideal  oasis  in  the  sandy  waste. 

Of  all  other  spots  on  this  continent,  or  on 
the  face  of  the  whole  globe,  as  to  that  matter, 
nowhere  else  may  be  found  a  more  concentrated 
interest  for  the  human  race — especially  the 
invalid  and  the  afflicted — than  that  belt  of  the 
United  States  whose  shore  is  laved  by  the 
cooling  swash  of  the  Gulf  Stream,  where  frost 
is  unknown.  Nowhere  else  has  Nature  left  so 
visibly  the  imprint  of  a  bounteously  lavish  hand 
that  bestowed  her  gifts  with  such  unmeasured 
prodigality. 

Upon  this  delight-inspiring  coast  stands  the 
oldest  town  in  America,  built  by  hands  from  the 
Old  World — or,  at  least,  the  oldest  whose  story 
has  been  portrayed  on  the  "pictured  page"  of 
history. 

Elsewhere  there  may  be,  and  more  than  proba- 
bly are,  buried  ruins  built  by  the  Carthaginians, 
the  Romans,  or,  yet  more  likely,  by  the  Phoeni- 
cians, in  times  of  great  antiquity. 

Somewhere  there  must  be  a  foundation  for 
the  well-preserved  legend  of  "  The  Lost  Atlantis  " 
of  the  Romans,  who  must  have  largely  credited 


the  story,  or  rather,  perhaps,  did  not  doubt  its 
authenticity. 

Somewhere  in  the  Western  world,  there  must 
have  been  land  known  to  the  Roman  navigators, 
which,  owing  to  the  want  of  compass,  new  men 
were  unable  again  to  find  after  some  sudden 
vicissitude  had  crippled  navigation  until  those 
acquainted  with  the  distant  shores  were  all 
dead. 

But,  however,  we  have  unquestionable  testi- 
mony to  support  the  claim  of  this  quaint  sea- 
coast  town  to  the  appellation  of  ancient — the 
mother  of  towns  in  the  United  States. 

This  fact  alone  should  shed  upon  that  shore 
where  stands  this  venerable  place  a  bright  ray,  a 
refulgent  halo  of  reverential  interest  worthy  to  be 
consecrated  as  hallowed  and  sacred,  were  there 
no  other  charms  about  it  to  bind  the  admiring 
beholder  with  ravishing  rapture.  But  there  are 
other  captivating  charms  with  thriUing  fascina- 
tions entwined  about  them,  before  which,  to  the 
carnal  sensibilities  of  mankind,  this  relic  of  the 
centuries  pales  to  insignificance. 

The  old  Fort  claims  the  attention  of  tourists. 
Its  tragic  legends  are  familiar  to  the  student  or 
the  reader. of  American  history. 

Along  with  the  Fort  stands  the  ancient  Cathe- 
dral, whose  lamp  has  been  kept  trimmed  and 
uninterruptedly  burning  for  more  than  two  hun- 
dred years. 

Farther  down  South,  along  the  coast,  are  the 
ruins  of  the  old  Indigo  and  Sugar  Works,  and 
plantations. 

Here  was  once  maintained  a  serfdom  rarely 
paralleled  in  the  history  of  slavery.  The  un- 
fortunate sufferers  were  mostly  colonies  lured  by 
their  ruthless  masters  to  emigrate  from  Greece 
and  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean. 

There  is  nothing  pictured  In  "Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin"  to  approximate  the  atrocities  to  which 
these  hapless  and  helpless  victims  were  subjected. 

Their  domiciles  of  torture  were  many  miles 
from  the  ancient  town,  the  residence  of  the  Gov- 
ernor, with  a  broad  river  intervening. 

In  time,  their  burdens  grew  much  and  multi- 
plied until  they  became  unbearable ;  and  the 
poor  wretches  conspi  red  against  their  masters. 

A  few  men  w^orked  at  night,  and  were  assisted 


242 


MYSTIC  KOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AXD  THE  GEET. 


by  others  to  com23lete  their  weekly  tasks,  in  or- 
der to  secure  a  sufficient  hohday  to  give  them 
time  to  visit,  and  lay  their  grievances  before  the 
Governor.  They  were  obliged  to  swim  the  river, 
both  going  to  and  returning  from  the  town. 

The  Governor  graciously  listened  to  their  pray- 
ers for  relief,  and  invited  them  to  come  at  once 
to  the  town  with  all  their  people,  and  take  up 
their  abode  under  his  protection. 

As  soon  as  dark,  after  their  return,  they  col- 
lected their  people ;  armed  the  men  with  wooden 
spears  and  other  improvised  weapons ;  formed 
them  into  a  hollow  square,  so  as  to  present  a 
solid  phalanx  on  either  side,  surrounding  the  old 
people,  women  and  children,  and  marched  away 
in  bold  defiance  of  their  chagrined  and  menacing 
masters. 

Thus  emancipated,  they  became  an  important 
factor  to  the  ancient  town,  where  many  of  their 
descendants  are  to  be  seen  to  this  day. 

They  are  yet  an  exclusive  and  rather  ostracized 
race;  but  unjustly,  because  they  are  a  proud,  an 
intelligent,  industrious,  and  withal  a  good  people. 
They  are  known  as  "  Mornarcains." 

This  term  usually  is  meant  to  imply  contempt, 
inferiority,  or  some  other  indefinable  slur,  Avhen 
employed  by  other  races ;  who  often  aver  that 
they  are  speaking  of  a  mongrel  people,  whose 
blood  is  deeply  tainted  with  that  of  the  negro. 

Nothing  is  more  basely  false.  Such  is  due 
more  to  ignorance  of  the  true  history  of  this  long- 
suffering  and  much-persecuted  people,  to  current 
prejudice  and  common  report,  than  to  willful  ma- 
liciousness on  the  part  of  their  often  slandering 
neighbors. 

Naturally  new-comers  hear  and  believe  these 
stories.  If  they  casually  inquire  who  such  peo- 
ple are,  the  answer,  "  Oh,  they  are  nothing  but 
'  Mornarcains,'  "  usually  suffices  to  put  to  rest  all 
interested  inquisitiveness. 

The  poor  people  are  patient,  and  never  resent, 
nor  strive  to  counteract  their  injuries,  which  really 
appear  to  cause  them  no  concern.  Their  com- 
plexion is  very  light  Creole.  Among  the  women 
are  Andalusian  beauties,  with  long  black  hair  and 
large,  dark,  dreamy  eyes. 

This  race  is  widely  dispersed  through  the  State, 


and,  except  in  the  savage  tribes,  were  for  long 
periods  of  time  almost  its  only  inhabitants. 

But  enough  of  this  interesting  people,  and 
something  more  of  the  country. 

Few  countries,  and  no  other  section  of  the 
United  States,  have  ever  been  scourged,  and  smit- 
ten, and  paralyzed  in  the  struggling  vicissitudes  of 
the  march  of  civilization,  as  this  fair  and  smiling 
land  of  which  we  write. 

The  jealous  rivals  of  the  olden  time  often 
almost  depopulated  it.  To  its  few  citizens  the 
savage  hosts  never  ceased  to  be  a  murderous  and 
devastating  terror,  until  nearly  the  middle  of  the 
present  century. 

The  Civil  War,  and  the  reign  of  terror  which 
followed  in  its  wake,  retrogressed  settlement  and 
prosperity  almost  to  the  deplorable  condition  in 
which  the  savages  left  them. 

Not  until  about  the  year  1870,  did  actual  set- 
tlement and  development  set  in. 

Since  1876,  enthusiasm,  progress  and  "booms,' 
have  been  the  predominating  features  prevailing 
in  this  "  sunny  land  of  flowers." 

In  1883,  her  destiny  is  fixed,  her  future  more 
than  a  shadowy  dream :  she  is  the  winter  garden 
of  America — the  invalids'  asylum  of  Earth. 

The  capital  of  earth  to  her  sceptre  is  beginning 
to  bow ;  the  golden  streams  of  the  world  to  pour 
into  her  lap. 

Her  waste,  howling  swamps,  where  the  scream- 
ing panther,  the  snarhng  bear,  and  the  deep- 
mouthed  roaring  alligator  have  held  undisputed 
carnivals  as  monarehs  of  the  forest  and  the  deep 
since  Creation's  dawn,  are  in  jirocess  of  trans- 
formation to  blooming  Edens. 

Her  orange-groves  are  rapidly  becoming  the 
wonder  of  the  world,  while  all  other  productions 
of  the  tropics  are  found  to  flourish  prolifically. 

This  is  true  of  the  southern  belt  only,  below 
the  frost  line;  north  of  this,  however,  the 
orange  and  other  hardy  fruits  are  quite  success- 
fully cultivated. 

Many  poor  pepole  are  greatly  deluded  and 
swindled  by  "land  sharks."  These  miscreants 
pubhsh  falsely  colored  statements  to  attract  emi- 
gration; and  then  induce  the  unsuspecting  vic- 
tims to  settle  on  unsuitable  land. 

The  variety  of  soil  is  very  great.     Some  sec- 


WHERE  THE  PALMETTO  BUDS  AND  THE  MAGNOLIA  BLOOMS.       243 


tions  are  entirely  unsuited  to  industries  whicli 
are  admirably  adapted  to  other  sections;  there  is 
much  laud  valuable  for  other  purposes,  upon 
which  oranges  will  never  grow. 

This  fact  many  people  learn  to  their  disgust 
and  sorrow,  only  after  all  their  money  and  some 
years  of  time,  have  been  wasted  in  the  useless 
attempt  to  accomplish  an  impossibility. 

This  is  truly  the  poor  man's  country,  after  he 
once  becomes  acclimated  and  secures  a  foothold. 
But  if  he  lands  here  very  poor,  ignorant  of  the 
country,  and  a  stranger  to  the  phenomena  of  the 
climate,  he  may  anticipate  some  bitter  and  very 
trying  experiences  during  the  first  season,  as  well 
as  some  cruel  disappointments.  But,  however, 
these  features  are  steadily  improving  with  the 
civilization  and  the  prosperity  of  the  country. 

The  cool  winds  from  the  Gulf  Stream  trans- 
form the  Southern  coast,  which  otherwise  might 
be  a  torrid  clime,  to  one  of  the  most  moderately 
temperate  sections  on  the  globe,  where  the  ordi- 
nary range  of  the  thermometer  is  between  60° 
and  83°,  averaging  73°  all  the  year  round. 
Never  is  it  uncomfortable  in  the  shade  at  noon- 
day, nor  the  use  of  a  blanket  unnecessary  at  night. 
As  a  place  for  winter  residence  and  resort,  it  is 
nowhere  rivaled. 

Here  it  is  so  easy  merely  to  live  without  great 
effort,  after  securing  a  foothold,  that  the  term, 
"  the  lazy  man's  country,"  is  apt  and  appropriate. 

But  we  must  desist :  this  chai-ming  theme  is 
luring  us  far  from  our  proper  province. 

Of  this  matchless  clime  and  land  Garland 
Cloud  writes  the  most  glowing  letters  to  his 
constituency. 

He  makes  very  admirable  arrangements  for  his 
friends;  but  their  tardy  arrival  greatly  mars  their 
prospects. 

Thia  requires  Cloud  to  make  a  trip  to  the  lead- 
mg  sea-port,  where  his  room  is  entered,  chloro- 
form administered  to  him,  and  he  robbed  of  all 
his  money — except  some  previously  remitted  to 
the  East,  to  purchase  supphes  for  a  contemplated 
arrangement. 

While  in  this  city  he  is  very  nearly  imperiled 
once  more  in  the  painful  embarrassment  of  mis- 
taken identity,  as  the  sequence  will  demonstrate. 


He  meets  a  stranger  on  the  street  who  thus  accosts 
liini : 

"  Are  you  not  Mr.  Garland,  formerly  of  the 
'  Future  City  ?'  " 

Cloud  :  "  No,  sir ;  my  name  is  Cloud ;  my  home 
is  in  this  State." 

Stranger:  "I  beg  your  pardon,  sir;  I  readily 
perceive  my  mistake.  I  am  a  cotton  merchant 
in  that  city,  and  you  very  much  resemble  a  man 
whom  I  once  knew  well  there  by  that  name,  but 
the  first  word  you  uttered  convinced  me  of  my 
mistake." 

Cloud  :  "  There  is  often  a  strangely  striking 
resemblance  between  two  persons.  Being  mis- 
taken for  another  man,  about  the  close  of  the 
war,  has  cost  me  more  trouble  than  belongs  to 
forty  average  lives." 

Stranger:  "  Ye-s,  sir;  I  have  known  men  hung 
the  same  way.     Good-day." 

Garland  Cloud  is  seriously  embarrassed  by  the 
loss  of  his  money.  His  health  is  much  impaired 
from  the  effect  of  the  powerful  dose  of  chloroform 
administered  to  him. 

He  returns  to  the  section  selected  for  his 
friends.  There  he  finds  himself  under  the  ban 
of  suspicion.  He  is  regarded  as  an  impostor.  It 
is  doubted  whether  or  not  he  represents  a  colony; 
and  it  is  not  believed  that  he  lost  any  money. 

This  is  a  bitter  ordeal;  but  there  is  no  alterna- 
tive but  to  remain  and  endure  it.  To  leave,  M'^ould 
be  but  to  confirm  the  strong  suspicions  enter- 
tained against  him. 

In  the  meantime  he  loses  nearly  every  oppor- 
tunity upon  which  he  had  most  relied  for  his 
friends,  long  before  they  arrive. 

From  this  moment  Cloud  loses  courage  and 
hope.  He  recognizes  the  shadow  of  the  unpity- 
ing  avenger  still  pursuing  him,  and  comes  to  be- 
fieve  that  every  member  of  the  innocent,  over- 
confiding  colony  will  become  enthralled  in  the 
excruciating  torture  of  his  situation,  and  be  forced 
to  suffer  the  inevitable  contagion  of  his  own 
proper  curse. 

The  poor  colonists  work  with  courageous  will, 
but  nothing  they  touch  prospers.  Anxiety,  over- 
exposure, and  insufficient  nourishment,  together 
combined,  prostrate  every  member  of  the  colony 
with  fever  by  mid-summer.    Cloud  alone  remains 


244 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


out  of  bed  and  able  to  look  after  the  sick,  who 
are  scattered  over  territory  several  miles  in  ex- 
tent. These  people  are  not  acclimated.  The 
tides  are  unasually  high.  The  locality  is  natu- 
rally miasmatic,  and  the  overflow  renders  it  doubly 
unhealthy. 

Cloud  sticks  to  the  people  with  fidelity.  He 
is  their  only  hope  for  a  long  time.  His  endurance 
during  the  summer  and  fall  is  incredible. 

But  in  October  he  is  stricken  down,  after  the 
colonists  are  able  to  take  care  of  themselves,  and 
his  life  for  some  time  despaired  of — it  seems  that 
he  must  die.  However,  he  rallies,  gets  well,  and 
withdravN^s  the  shadow  of  his  curse  from  his 
friends. 

He  goes  to  a  prosperous  town  and  soon  forms 
a  commercial  co-partnership,  which,  however, 
proves  unsatisfactory,  and  is  in  a  short  time  dis- 
solved. 

X ow  he  goes,  with  verj^  little  money,  to  the 
city  where  he  had  been  robbed.  Why  he  goes 
there,  appears  a  mystery. 

He  .s  so  thoroughly  impressed  with  the  convic- 
tion that  the  dark  curse  of  his  own  rayless  life 
had  been  communicated  to  the  innocent  people 
who  had  linked  their  destiny  with  his,  that  he 
now  becomes  a  thorough  and  fixed  convert  to  the 
faith  that  nothing  with  which  he  is  connected  can 
thrive,  but  is  sure  to  come  to  grief  and  ruin. 

This  is  a  strange  man,  linked  to  a  strange  des- 
tiny. From  this  point  he  appears  to  enact  his 
role  as  though  following  the  text  of  a  perfectly 
planned  programme,  for  which  he  has  been  fully 
prepared  by  the  most  careful  study  and  the  most 
patient  practice. 

He  still  believes  that  he  can  neither  escape  the 
consequences  of  the  curse  which  has  pursued  him 
every  day  for  nearly  fifteen  years,  while  ever 
augmenting  its  pitiless  severity,  nor  cure  it ;  that 
the  day  has  long  since  gone  by  when  for  it  there 
was  a  remedy.  And  in  contemplating  it,  as  its 
developments  steadily  unfold,  we  are  gradually 
forced  to  admit  the  same. 

He  seems  to  have  settled  down  to  a  dormant 
state  of  stoical  indifference  as  to  himself,  or  to 
have  nothing  new  to  fear. 

Can  it  be  that  there  is  nothing — no  ghostly 
shadow  from  out  the  hidden  stores  of  those  years 


of  silent  and  mysterious  absence — to  haunt  him  ? 
or  is  it  true  that  there  can  be  naught  on  earth 
worse  than  the  present  reality  ? 

At  all  events,  as  to  these  things  he  appears  to 
exist  in  tranquil  composure. 


CHAPTER    LXVII. 

SUNSHINE     AND     SHADOW. 

'  Fair  clime  1  where  summer  ever  smiles 
Benignant  o'er  thy  blessed  Isles; 
There  mildly  dimpling  Ocean's  cheek, 
Keflects  the  tints  of  many  a  peak, — 
Caught  by  the  laughing  waters  that  lave 
These  Edens  of  the  southern  wave. 
And  If  at  times  a  transient  breeze, 
Breaks  the  blue  crystal  of  the  seas. 
Or  sweeps  one  blossom  from  the  trees,— 
How  welcome  is  each  gentle  air — 
That  wakes  and  wafts  the  odors  there; — 
For  the  Eose  o'er  crag  or  vale- 
Sultana  of  the  nightingale— 
The  maid  for  whom  his  melody, 
His  thousand  songs  are  heard  on  high,— 
Blooms  blushing  to  her  lover's  tale."— Byron. 


The  invalid  who  has  but  once  escaped  from  his 
ice-bound  northern  home  to  bask  in  this  blessed 
sunshine,  and  to  feel  his  languid  cheek  fanned  and 
kissed  by  these  exhilarating  zephyrs,  will  exclaim, 
after  reading  the  above  lines : 

"  Oh,  how  truly  well  Byron  has  pictured  that 
matchless  clime ! " 

Within  twenty-four  hours  after  his  arrival  at 
the  "  City  by  the  Sea,''  Garland  Cloud  is  in  busi- 
ness ;  in  ten  days,  his  success  is  assured. 

In  less  than  a  month,  he  is  the  commission 
agent  of  first-class  houses  in  more  than  a  dozen 
lines — some  of  the  first  houses  in  the  land ;  and 
is  selling  three-fourths  of  the  goods  in  such  lines 
purchased  by  the  wholesale  trade. 

He  is,  moreover,  planning  and  organizing  to 
control  the  leading  productions  of  the  country. 

Being  a  thorough  master  of  the  intricate  prob- 
lems of  business  negotiations,  and  a  man  of  con- 
summate commercial  experience  in  every  branch 
of  the  science,  undoubtedly  constitute  the  prime 
source  whence  his  extraordinary  success  springs ; 
because  he  has  no  influence  to  favor  him  with 
friendly  or  material  assistance. 


SUNSHINE   AND    SHADOW. 


215 


His  mail  propositions — tlie  medium  through 
which  he  opened  the  negotiations  and  consum- 
mated all  his  important  business  arrangements 
and  connections,  alone  and  unaided — led  on  to 
the  results  which  they  were  designed  to  achieve. 

A  few  months  later,  his  father's  family  joins 
him,  and  the  father  and  brother  are  associated 
with  him  in  the  business. 

The  firm  is  prosperous,  and  its  future  bright; 
or  thus  it  appears  to  the  world. 

Garland  Cloud  attends  church  and  Sundaj-- 
school;  but  steadily  dechnes  to  accept  invitations 
to  go  into  society,  and  to  be  introduced  to  ladies, 
even  those  in  the  Sunday-school  class  with  him. 

As  no  local  influence  may  in  any  way  promote 
his  busir  ^ss  interests,  and  as  he  avoids  the  fair 
sex  and  t,huns  society,  we  are  unable  to  detect  any 
sinister  motives  in  his  church  and  Sabbath-school 
attendance.  Perhaps  he  contemplates  leading 
an  exemplary  hfe,  and  cherishes  some  degree  of 
hope  that  in  this  Avay  he  may  wean  himself,  at 
least  partially,  from  the  weary  dream  of  the  bitter 
past. 

But  this  with  him  is  like  repentance  for  sins 
^vhich  are  still  retained.  Although  we  cannot 
challenge  his  motives  of  the  present,  by  which  he 
is  actuated ;  nor  call  into  question  the  purity  or 
the  sincerity  of  his  daily  Hfe ;  nor  doubt  his  desire 
and  resolution  to  make  it  useful,  true,  worthy,  and 
noble,  yet  still  the  dark,  scowhng  ghost  of  the  past 
hovers  about  and  haunts  him.  It  is  the  hideous 
and  menacing  phantom — his  insatiable  curse ;  the 
unatoned  penalty  for  wearing  a  mask ;  the  skele- 
ton shadow  of  all  false  lives — that  incurable  moral 
leprosy.  Hence,  it  is  with  Garland  Cloud  as  im- 
possible to  go  smoothly  and  correctly  down  the 
journey  of  life,  as  it  would  be  for  mortal  powers 
to  stay  the  wailing  breath  of  the  tempest,  or  to 
tame  the  ocean's  sweeping  surge. 

The  Avenger,  with  unabating  force,  still  holds 
the  retributive  scourge  suspended,  ready  to  inflict 
his  long-deferred  chastisement.  This  hold  he  will 
never  relax  ;  this  menace  never  abate ;  will  never 
relinquish  the  unpitying  severity  of  the  stern 
and  unsympathetic  executioner,  until  the  mask 
has  been  rent  and  torn  bodily  from  the  trans- 
gressor's face.  After  this  has  been  done,  and  he 
is  left  standing  in  the  nude  deformity  of  his  veri- 


table and  degrading  shame,  a  true  and  horrible 
semblance  of  what  he  has  been  and  is ;  an  ap- 
palling object  of  solemn  warning  for  the  world  to 
contemplate,  the  Avenger  will  be  satisfied  for  the 
afTairs  of  this  world.  The  fullness  of  the  measure 
of  his  earthly  chastisement  will  be  meted  cut  to 
the  ofiender ;  then  he  will  be  left  free  to  start  a 
new  and  true  life,  the  sole  architect  and  creator 
of  his  OAvn  temporal  redemption. 

Man  might,  but  he  never  will,  tear  away  the 
mask  with  his  own  hands.  Because  he  will  not 
do  this,  the  Avenger  causes  cherished  plans  and 
skillfully  designed  projects  to  be  woven  into  a 
snare  to  bring  the  culprit  to  grief.  Thus  he  will 
be  misled  _  to  make  the  very  moves  which  to  him 
seem  the  most  feasible  and  proper,  but  which, 
of  all  others  he  could  have  made  are  the  ones, 
as  he  invariably  perceives  only  when  too  late, 
the  most  certain  to  precipitate  his  discomfiture 
and  ruin. 

For  Garland  Cloud  such  is  the  doom  laid  up  in 
the  store-house  of  Fate,  and  there  held  subject  to 
the  dispensing  hand  of  Destiny — the  Avenger's 
reserve  of  retribution. 

This  mortal  mystery  views  a  struggling  people 
crippled  and  retarded  by  the  terrible  blight  of 
poverty,  amid  natural  resources  that  but  little 
capita]  and  effort  will  develop  to  fountains  whence 
will  flow  perpetual  streams  of  wealth — such  as 
will  emancipate  the  country  from  the  bondage  of 
jaenury  a»id  elevate  the  indigent  to  independence. 

The  visions  of  the  past  and  its  vows  of  devotion 
to  tlie  tillers  of  the  soil,  return  anew  to  Garland 
Cloud.  The  shadowy  images  of  that  August 
midnight,  as  he  seemed  to  behold  them  beneath 
the  deep-green  foliage  of  the  spreading  walnut- 
tree,  so  many  years  before,  again  stand  around 
him  amid  the  purple  midnight,  of  the  "  land  of 
all-night  twilights,"  under  the  mystic  shadows 
and  in  the  delicious  perfumes  of  a  lovely  grove  of 
orange-trees,  intermingled  with  beds  of  roses. 

The  soft  and  airy  images  in  this  superstition- 
conjuring  scene  seem  to  rebuke  him  for  his  inert 
apathy. 

After  these  extraordinary,  if  imaged  visitations, 
he  resolves  to  struggle  with  more  intensified  zeal 
td  attain  the  consummation  of  his  projects — the 


51G 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES   OF   THE  BLUE  AND  THE  ^EY. 


offsprings  of  uncurbed  ambition,  the  jirogeny  of 
rational  madness. 

The  supreme  obstacle  which  intervenes  to  be 
surmounted,  is  the  want  of  an  immense  sum  of 
money  above  the  available  resources  and  credits 
at  his  command — means  beyond  the  ability  of 
home  banking  facilities  to  supph^ :  a  theme  which 
causes  him  deep  solicitude. 

He  dreams  of  the  most  absurd  and  improbable 
expedient,  involving  both  intricate  and  danger- 
ous contingencies  deeply  shaded  by  dishonor  and 
darkly  fraught  with  crime. 

But  what  are  these  considerations  to  a  man 
with  Garland  Cloud's  elastic  scruples,  so  long  as 
the  barriers  to  the  progress  of  his  cherished 
schemes  are  thus  cleared  away  ?  Though  there 
is  no  more  in  favor  of  their  use,  than  a  fair  proba- 
bility that  his  success  might  be  assured,  he  would 
scarcely  hesitate  to  employ  any  means,  regard- 
less of  personal  jeopardy.  On  "the  field  of 
G-ettysburg "  ^^ve  heard  him  thus  vowing  to  his 
father,  while  he  was  yet  young,  worthy,  noble  and 
true  in  character — before  more  than  "the  mask 
of  war"  had  shadowed  his  fair  and  courageous 
brow. 

The  dream  presents  a  programme  as  lucid  as 
though  it  had  been  printed  in  glowing  lette.rs — or 
thus  it  was  impressed  on  the  memory  of  G-ar- 
land  Cloud. 

It  is  a  plan  to  procure  over-issued  securities 
and  borrow  money  on  them,  the  viodus  operandi 
to  be  executed  in  a  great  commercial  centre — but 
so  hazardous  that  few  professional  swindlers 
would  risk  the  first  and  most  simple  preliminary 
steps  requisite  to  a  successful  issue  of  the  venture- 
some transactions. 

He  casually  investigates  the  prehminary  feat- 
ures, without  the  remotest  dream  that  they  will 
lure  him  to  pursue  them.  He  is  amazed,  hoAv- 
ever,  to  find  them  identically  as  indicated  by  the 
dream. 

Now,  step  by  step,  he  follows  the  other  features 
without  the  slightest  deviation,  thoroughly  forti- 
fying each  one  against  ordinary  dangers  of  com- 
mercial detection,  or  even  suspicion,  until  the 
negotiation  for  the  money  is  actually  consum- 
mated. 

In  less  than  two  days  after  his  strange  dream, 


he  is  on  the  way  to  execute  its  ^problematical 
revelations. 

He  dines  at  home,  and  tr.kes  leave  of  the  family 
for  a  fortnight,  with  lightly  indifferent  confidence. 
No  member  of  his  firm  or  family  entertains  the 
remotest  idea  of  the  nature  of  his  sudden  trip,  nor 
the  secret  purpose  carried  away  in  his  heart. 

His  family-people  gaze  after  his  receding  form, 
as  it  turns  the  street  corner,  with  apprehensions 
not  unUke  those  experienced  as  they  looked  at 
him  through  the  misty  twilight  so  many  years 
before,  as  he  was  vanishing  on  that  wave  of  the 
sea  of  life  which  was  to  bear  him  onward  into 
the  battle-storm. 

The  first  night  out,  he  dreams  that  he  sees  his 
father's  family  in  tears  of  despair,  and  leaving 
home. 

Had  the  business  arrangements  made  in  con- 
nection with  his  forbidden  operation  rested  upon 
a  legitimate  and  an  honorable  basis,  few  are  ever 
consummate  with  advantages  equal  to  those  then 
promised. 


SOME    REMINDERS    OF    THE    BY-GONE   TIME. 

On  the  fourth  day  of  July,  while  thus  sojourn- 
ing: in  the  "big  city,"  pending  his  precarious 
enterprise,  as  Cloud  is  slowly  walking  under  the 
inviting  shade  amid  the  refreshing  fountains  of 
a  beautiful  park,  seeking  relief  from  the  oppres- 
sive heat  of  a  super-tropical  sun,  he  meets  an  un- 
expected and  startling  incident. 

He  is  suddenly  arrested  by  the  sound  of  a 
voice — a  long-forgotten  but  still  familiar  voice— 
calling  his  name.  The  voice  of  one  whom  he  had 
known  amid  the  stirring,  unearthly  scenes  of  fire, 
lilood  and  death,  in  the  dark  and  trying  past ;  a 
voice  with  thrilling  pathos  in  its  tones,  soul- 
moving  music  in  its  cadence.  Turning  his  face 
in  the  direction  whence  it  came,  he  mentally 
exclaims :  "  Shades  of  Uncle  Jake  and  the  fairies." 

What  memoirs  and  associations  for  the  mind 
to  revert  to  in  sadness!  And  what  an  awe-in- 
spiring theme!  The  early  days  of  the  war 
around  the  out-posts ;  the  secret  service  and  its 
mvsteries;  the  actors  and  the  actresses  who  Avere 
together  blended  in  its  excitements  and  its  dan- 
o-ors — their  shadows  suddenly  and  unexpectedly 


SUNSHINE  AND  SHADOW. 


247 


rising  up,  as  though  from  the  earth,  and  appear- 
ing in  the  broad  hght  of  day  in  the  peaceful  dells 
of  an  enchanting  park,  is  indeed  a  startling 
wonder. 

There,  before  Cloud's  open  eyes,  sits  the  veri- 
table, ebon-faced  old  man,  with  hair  and  beard 
white  as  ermine — or  thus  it  appears  when  con- 
trasted with  the  deep  black  of  his  face — on  the 
box  of  a  coach,  holding  a  spirited,  restless  team ; 
and  his  good-natured,  honest  face  beaming  with 
a  smile  of  earnest  sincerity.  And  near  him,  on 
a  bench,  are  those  whom  Cloud  once  knew  as 
Cornelia  Earl  and  Leonora  Faicchild,  with  some 
bright-eyed,  curly-headed  children  gambolling 
around  them. 

The  ladies  beckon  to  Cloud  to  advance.  He 
does  so.  As  he  passes  by  the  coach,  the  old  man 
bends  forward  with  an  extended  hand,  which  is 
grasped  by  Cloud,  as  he  exclaims : 

"  Ah!  Uncle  Jake,  it  does  me  good  to  press  an 
honest  hand.  But  who  told  you  it  was  I,  before 
you  called?  " 

Jake:  "Bress  de  Lawrd,  Massa  Cloud,  dese 
ole  ize  ob  mine,  dat  would  no  yore  ize  an'  noze  if 
yore  hare  and  berde  waz  white,  an'  yore  face 
rinkled  az  mine.     Glad  to  see  yor." 

Cloud:  "Thank  you.  Uncle  Jake.  I  appreci- 
ate your  sentiments.     Your  memory  is  acute." 

The  ladies  explain  that  one  of  them  is  mar- 
ried to  a  prosperous  lawyer,  the  other  to  a 
banker ;  and  that  they  have  resided  in  the  city 
for  more  than  ten  years. 

The  story  of  the  ladies,  relative  to  the  burning 
of  their  homes,  their  flight  into  the  Confederate 
lines,  and  subsequent  career  as  hospital  nurses  in 
Richmond,  is  intensely  interesting  to  Garland 
Cloud,  and  might  prove  equally  interesting  to  the 
few  friends  of  these  ladies — friends  who  would  be 
able  to  recognize  them  from  reading  these  pages ; 
but  the  circumstances  and  details  are  too  much 
like  those  of  many  familiar  and  kindred  stories  to 
interest  the  public. 

After  recounting  these  by-gone  incidents,  and 
much  other  rambling  conversation,  Cloud  ex- 
cuses himself  for  not  accepting  pressing  invita- 
tions to  call  on  the  ladies  at  their  homes ;  and 
he  takes  leave  of  these  friends,   around  whose 


names  cluster  so  many  reminiscences  of  the  dead- 
line scenes  of  war. 

On  the  next  Sabbath  following  this  incident, 
Garland  Cloud  is  standing  in  the  rotunda  of  his 
hotel  looking  out  on  the  street,  when  a  man  -ap- 
proaches him,  saying:  "Howdaydo?"  repeat- 
ing the  words  three  times,  extending  at  the 
same  time  his  hand,  until  Cloud  says : 

"Pardon  me,  sir,  but  you  are  mistaken,"  and 
starts  to  turn  indifferently  away,  when  the  man 
answers : 

"  I  am  not  mistaken,  sir.  If  you  are  not  Gar- 
land Cloud,  whom  I  once  and  long  knew  in  Vir- 
ginia, then  my  name  is  not  Dano." 

Cloud  :  •'  Mr.  Dano  !  my  best  friend  in  the  dark 
days  of  yore  ?  " 

DaNo:  "Yes;  and  your  friend  in  the  light 
day?  or  any  other  days,  who  could  and  would 
have  saved  you  from  that  torturing  earthly  hell 
in  which  I  know  you  have  existed  every  hour  of 
your  life,  whether  waking  or  sleeping,  for  thir- 
teen years  this  very  month,  or,  perTiaps,  next 
month,  and  from  which  you  may  never  find  re- 
demption on  this  side  of  the  tomb,  had  you  only 
confided  to  me  a  bare  hint  of  the  nature  of  the 
maddening  reality  that  drove  you  to  despair. 

"  I  afterwards  learned  with  amazement  that  all 
your  desperation  was  the  result  of  the  black  and 
damnable  machinations  of  Walter  Paulona  and 
Qiarles  Lorenzi :  the  former  being  actuated  by  a 
desire  to  remove  you  from  between  himeelf  and 
the  hand  of  Carrie  Harman  ;  the  latter  by  a  pur- 
pose to  step  into  your  business  shoes." 

Cloud  :  "  I  never  once  suspected  that  tl«ir  let- 
ters were  basely  false.  It  was  my  implicit  faith 
in  the  sincerity  of  these  men  and  the  truthfulness 
of  their  statements  that  drove  me  tnad. 

"  More  than  two  years  ago  I  accidentally  met 

Judge  R ,  who  told  me  all  the  heart-rending 

story — not  then  heart-rending,  because  my  heart 
was  lifeless  to  such  emotions,  but  a  story  which 
might  have  saved  me,  had  I  merely  imagined  its 
existence  in  that  dark  hour  of  the  long  ago. 

"  Ah,  my  friend!  to  remember  that  I  was  ever 
induced  to  believe  that  the  friendship  of  Carrie 
Harman  had  been  suddenly  estranged  from  me, 
yet  provokes  a  pang  of  agony." 


248 


^lYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AXD  THE  GKEY. 


Dano  :  "  "Well,  Cloud,  I  have  pitied  and  sym- 
pathized with  you  as  though  you  had  beeij  my 
brother.  I  have  been  gratified  to  recognize  in 
you  one  among  the  few  truly  honest  business 
men." 

Cloud  :  "  No,  don't  say  that.  I  do  not  merit 
it.  The  want  of  an  indomitable  moral  courage  to 
enable  me  to  fling,  yes,  fearlessly  to  tear  from  my 
life  every  vestige  of  falsehood,  and  to  appear  as  I 
have  been,  as  I  am,  and  as  I  feel,  has  been  my 
bane. 

"  Your  conjectures  as  to  my  life  are  true.  I 
have  ever  struggled  to  appear  to  the  world  in  a 
false  Hght,  so  that  my  life  has  been  a  lie.  To 
every  one,  except  myself  alone,  it  has  been,  and  is, 
a  deceptive  delusion." 

Da^Jo  :  "  That  may  all  be  very  true,  yet  it  is  not 
pertinent  to  the  question  in  point  to  which  I 
allude.  I  mean  that  the  irrefutable  evidence  of 
your  honesty  was  manifested  in  the  act  of  your 

contriving  to  return  the  T banks  the  many 

thousand  dollars  to  cover  your  drafts  which  were 
refused  by  the  parties  upon  whom  they  were 
drawn — the  fate  of  all  your  drafts  presented  after 
the  publication  of  your  supposed  self-destruction — 
and  many  months  after  your  disappearance,  when 
the  banks  had  given  up  the  matter  as  hopelessly 
lost. 

"  Most  of  your  agents  acted  badly.  Paulona 
and  Lorenzi  bought  up  the  claims  of  the  farmers 
for  a  song,  and  kept  the  money  you  sent  to  pay 
such  claims.  Out  of  all  that  was  due  you,  and 
the  large  stock  of  goods  on  hand,  your  Eastern 
friends  never  received  a  dollar." 

Cloud  :  "These  are  painful  themes  to  discuss* 
or  contemplate.  Pray  spare  me  the  torture  of 
talking  over  these  scenes  of  folly,  which  I  shall 
ever  regret,  but  can  never  recall  nor  repair. 

"As  a  matter  of  course,  you  would  like  to 
know  all  the  story  from  then  to  this  day.  I  have 
told  you  more  than  I  intended  to  tell.  Please 
refrain  from  asking  me  for  fuller  details." 

DaiJo  :  "  Certainly,  ■  Cloud.  I  would  not 
cause  you  needless  pain,  merely  to  gratify  my 
curiosity." 

Cloud  :  "I  would  tell  you  all  as  freely  as  any 
one  on  earth,  but  it  would  do  you  no  tjood  and 
cost  me  much  pain. 


"It  is  my  purpose  to  make  good,  sooner  or 
later,  every  dollar  that  any  one,  anywhere,  has 
ever  lost  on  my  account.  If  I  can  ever  get  on  a 
true,  substantial  basis,  this  may  be  possible.  My 
talents  and  capacities  are  adequate  to  the  task, 
could  they  be  properly  employed  in  the  right 
direction  and  cause. 

"  But  somehow  I  feel  oppressed  by  a  supersti- 
tious apprehension  that  anything  I  undertake  is 
fated,  and  will  be  blighted  by  the  curse  of  the 
past,  from  Avhich  it  seems  that  there  is  no  escape 
in  this  world. 

"  I  wish  that  I  could  detail  to  you  all  the  com- 
plications of  my  present  enterprises.  Had  I  met 
you  ten  days  earlier,  I  might  have  told  you  all 
about  my  prospects  and  wants,  and  secured  your 
assistance.  But  it  is  too  late  now.  The  destiny 
of  my  future  is  past  my  control.  With  no 
failures,  in  my  promised  facilities,  success  seems 
probable.  Should  fair  promises  prove  delusive,  I 
will  be  stranded.  This  will  be  neither  a  surpris- 
ing nor  a  new  experince.  I  am  inured  to  such 
fortune." 

DaSo  :  "  I  hope  you  will  succeed.  You  de- 
serve success.  Your  greatest  trouble  is,  you  can- 
not learn  to  make  haste  slowly.  You  cannot  be 
content  to  take  a  low  or  intermediate  position, 
and  build  from  it;  you  must  do  something  grand 
from  the  very  start,  and  surpass  every  one  about 
you." 

Cloud  :  "  I  confess  that  my  ambition  and  my 
Avill  have  always  outstripped  my  ability  and 
means." 

DaNo  :  "I  suppose  you  have  connections  with 
Oglethrop,  Harman  &  Co.  I  am  sure  that  you 
could  get  large  assistance  there." 

Cloud:  "No;  I  have  not  and  shall  not. 
There  is  too  much  of  the  past  associated  with 
them." 

For  a  week,  these  friends  of  the  olden  time  are 
almost  inseparable. 

Cloud  finally  details  to  this  old  friend  every- 
thing about  his  present  plans,  save  the  pending 
dark  transaction.  Had  he  met  this  friend  at  an 
earher  day,  the  chances  are  great  that  he  never 
Avould  have  imbued  his  hand  with  this  crime. 

He  felt  that  this  meeting  was  one  last,  indefin- 
able chance  that  had  been  afi'orded  him  to  escape 


SUNSHINE  AND   SHADOW. 


249 


from  his  false  fetters,  and  to  enable  him  to  return 
to  paths  of  truth  and  honor. 

After  he  had  bidden  this  friend  farewell  late 
at  night,  and  returned  to  his  room,  while  the 
friend  was  speeding  aWay  for  his  south-western 
home.  Cloud  regrets  that  he  had  not  grasped  the 
opportimity  and  told  him  all.  He  once  was  Cloud's 
savior  in  a  dark  hour.  Cloud  might  have  ar- 
ranged with  him  and  through  his  house  to  do  a 
safe  and  honorable  business,  just  half  as  extensive 
as  tiiat  jDlanned  in  connection  with  the  false  and 
precarious  pajier ;  and  tten  canceled  that  hazard- 
ous arrangement,  and  destroyed  the  paper.  But 
it  had  passed,  as  had  many  other  regretted  occa- 
sions, and  could  not  l)e  recalled. 


HORRORS    OF    THE    NIGHT. 

After  midnight  Cloud  falls  into  a  deep  sleep, 
from  exhaustion — not  the  refreshing  slumber  of 
quiet  repose. 

While  thus  wrapped  in  the  arms  of  semi-death, 
G-arland  Cloud  dreams  that  he  is  in  his  own 
sunny  land  in  the  level,  open  woodland  country ; 
flymg  with  his  false  paper,  seeking  in  vain  for 
a  place  to  hide  it,  unobserved  by  his  pursuers. 
Finally  he  succeeds  in  eluding  them,  suffi- 
ciently to  gain  his  own  home,  where  he  fancies 
he  may  burn  the  paper  before  they  can  arrive. 

But — great  horrors ! — on  opening  and  entering 
the  front  gaite,  a  sti-ang-e  and  powerful  dog  catches 
him  by  the  wrist  and  holds  him  firmly,  so  that  he 
finds  it  impossible  to  kick  him  off,  or  in  any  way 
to  extricaite  his  Hmb,  which  the  brute  every 
moment  ia  mangling  in  a  most  horrible  manner ; 
and  he  is  unable  to  utter  one  cry  for  assistance, 
while  the  pursuers  are  rapidly  a{)proaching. 

Just  as  they  arrive  at  the  gate,  he  awakes 
with  great  beads  of  cold  sweat  standing  all  over 
him,  and  he  is  so  weak  that  he  can  scarcely 
move  or  speak. 

He  stammers  aloud:  "Thank  God!  it  is  only  a 
dream."  But  he  is  unable  to  sleep,  and  walks 
the  floor  of  his  room  until  morning. 

When  the  sun  at  length  rises.  Garland  Cloud's 
mind  is  made  up.  He  has  resolved  that  before 
the  sun  reaches  the  zenith,  the  last  false  bond 
shall  be  in 


It  will,  liowever,  be  ten  o'clock  before  the 
vaults  in  which  some  of  the  paper  is  deposited 
will  be  opened.  He  cannot  endure  the  sus- 
pense of  the  intervening  hours  at  the  hotel. 

Thus  oppressed,  he  leaves  the  hotel  and  goes 
down  town  among  those  of  his  correspondents 
who  are  earhest  at  their  places  of  business.  He 
finds  everything  so  cheerful,  re-assuring  and 
promising,  that  his  gloomy  forbodings  are  quickly 
dispelled. 

Now,  then,  he  can  readily  attribute  his  dis- 
quieting dream  to  a  late  and  heavy  supper,  of 
which  he  partook  too  freely  with  his  friend, 
after  returning  hungry  from  the  sea-beach; 
and  he  goes  to  work  in  extraordinary  and  good 
spirits,  with  no  purpose  to  abandon  his  un- 
worthy transactions. 


RAPIDLY    CHANGING   SCENES. 

Garland  Cloud  returns  to  his  room,  and  writes 
letters  for  some  hours. 

This  work  complete,  he  descends  to  the  office, 
drops  his  letters  in  the  box — little  dreaming  of 
the  revolution  about  to  burst  upon  him,  or  that 
he  is  at  the  end  of  the  closing  scene,  in  the  last 
act  of  the  widely  varying  vicissitudes  of  his 
strangely  checkered  and  mysteriously  eventful 
career. 

Turning  from  the  letter-box  he  takes  three 
steps  in  the  direction  of  the  water-cooler,  when 
a  well-known  man  taps  him  on  the  shoulder — a 
man  from  his  own  city. 

From  this  man  Garland  Cloud  learns  that  the 
hounds  of  justice  are  on  his  track;  that  the 
menacing  danger  of  the  heavy  hand  of  the 
law  is  hovering  over  his  head. 

After  many  years  his  final  and  inevitable  day 
of  retribution  has  come  with  crushing  vengeance. 
Fate  has  decreed,  and  the  guardian  angels  of 
the  good  and  the  pure  have  so  guided,  directed  and 
disposed  events  as  to  prevent  one  farthing  of 
crime-contaminated  funds  from  being  employed 
in  connection  with  the  honest  and  the  innocent 
father  and  brother,  and  caused  the  masked  son 
and  brother  to  be  severed,  with  his  abiding  curse, 
from  them. 

And  furthermore.  Providence  ordains  that  he 
shall  be  precipitated  into  the  seething  eddy  of 


250 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


the  boiling,  impetuous  whirlpool  of  the  horrors 
of  an  earthly  hell,  where  the  mask  will  be 
stripped  from  him,  and  he  left  standing  in  the 
nude  deformity  of  his  true  but  darkly  ignoble 
character. 

Garland  Cloud  is  under  surveillance.  Instantly 
he  comprehends  the  hideous  reahty. 

From  the  first  moment  he  bows  in  humble 
resignation  to  the  Chastener's  scourge.  ■  He 
makes  no  effort  to  retard  the  operation  nor  to 
escape  the  penalties  of  justice;  but  he  rather 
lends  helping  haste  to  facilitate  its  process. 

The  exposure  sprang,  apparently,  from  mere 
chance — an  outside  source  separate  from,  and 
entirely  independent  of  the  commercial  features 
of  the  transaction — the  story  of  an  errand  boy 
to  his  family.  This  boy  had  seen  some  of  the 
paper  in  Cloud's  room.  This  circumstance 
founded  the  story  named.  After  a  long  time 
it  found  its  way  to  the  ears  of  the  proper  party, 
to  develop  the  results  indicated. 

Who  can  confute  the  manifest  testimony  here 
afforded,  that  in  all  this  the  invisible  finger  of  some 
supernatural  power  had  been  the  means  which 
so  influenced  and  directed  all  as  to  bring  upon 
Garland  Cloud  his  long  and  well-merited  retri- 
bution. Nothing  can  be  clearer  or  more  posi- 
tive. Mere  chance  never  brought  all  these  httle 
points  together  in  such  harmony  and  unison. 
Such  was  Cloud's  superstitious  conclusion. 

He  at  once  delivers  up  all  the  paper,  having 
gone  in  company  with  a  detective  and  withdrawn 
it  all  from  the  parties  with  whom  it  was  de- 
posited. Not  one  of  these  parties  entertained 
the  remotest  suspicion  why  the  paper  was  with- 
drawn. Some  of  them  canceled  the  transaction 
with  reluctance. 

A  warrant  has  been  in  the  meantime  obtained 
by  the  detective  for  Cloud's  arrest.  This  is 
served  upon  him  as  soon  as  the  last  of  the  paper 
has  been  taken  up. 

No  one  of  the  parties  with  whom  the  trans- 
action had  been  made  will  prosecute  him. 

However,  he  waives  examination,  demands 
immediate  indictment,  pleads  guilty,  and  is  sen- 
tenced to  a  term  of  years  imprisonment,  not- 
withstanding the  fact  that  able  ler^al  talent  main- 


tains the  "criminal  intent"  could  not  be  suf- 
ficiently estabUshed  to  sustain  conviction. 

As  he  is  entering  the  corridor  of  the  jail  he 
receives  some  distressing  letters  from  home. 

While  reading  these  letters  an  involuntary 
moan  escapes  the  hps  of  this  wretch,  as  he  slowly 
paces  the  dark  and  gloomy  recess  of  a  con- 
demned cell,  and  he  soliloquizes : 

"Ah,  at  last  I  am  now  draining  to  the  dregs  the 
cup  of  bitterness !  I  have  wrung  other  hearts ;  now 
it  comes  home  to  me  in  the  piteous  wails  of  the 
members  of  my  poor  father's  family.  It  is  their 
suffering  and  not  my  own,  that  lashes  me  now 
Avith  such  stinging  blows. 

"Now  must  the  dark  secrets  of  my  hfe  come 
to  hg-ht." 


CHAPTER  LXVIII 

THE  MEETING  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY  UNDER 
A  CLOUD. 

"  Of  all  sad  words  of  tongue  or  pen, 
The  saddest  are  these— it  might  have  been." 

— Whittier. 

Let  us  shift  the  staging  a  bit,  in  order  to  permit 
two  of  our  early  characters  to  step  forth  and  de- 
velop some  features  of  their  ill-fated  roles. 

On  a  sultry  Sabbath  morning,  a  fcAV  weeks  after 
Garland  Cloud's  arrival  at  his  prison  home,  he  ob- 
tains permission  from  his  keeper  to  cross  the  yard 
for  some  purpose. 

When  turning  the  corner  of  a  building  on  the 
way  he  suddenly  runs  almost  against  another  fel- 
low-unfortunate coming  in  haste  from  the  oppo- 
site direction.  Both  stop  as  if  transfixed  as  dumb 
statues  to  the  spots  where  they  stand. 

Where  ?  when  ?  or  under  what  circumstances 
have  we  before  met,  are  questions  which  each  is 
mentally  asking  himself,  while  they  thus  remain 
gazing  at  each  other  in  speechless  wonderment. 

Uji  to  this  moment,  Cloud  has  been  persuaded 
that  there  is  not  one  man  in  the  prison  domain 
who  had  ever  known  him  personally  in  the  other 
life. 

Such  is  precisely  the  fancied  conviction  of  the 
other  man. 

But  now  each  is  forced  to  reahze  the  certainty 
that  he  is  recognized  bv  some  one  who  had  been 


MEETING  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY  UNDER  A  CLOUD. 


251 


more  than  a  merely  casual  acquaintance  of  the 
past.  Still,  however,  they  both  feel  that  such 
acquaintance  had  been  of  some  nature  blended 
with  the  terrible  or  the  tragic  so  closely  as  to  im- 
print upon  the  memory  of  each  indelible  recollec-* 
tions  not  to  be  forgotten. 

Time,  with  obliterating  furrows,  had  ploughed 
and  defaced  the  countenance,  yet  the  sharp  out- 
lines of  the  well-remembered  features  still  remain 
to  haunt  the  two  men  with  momentary  and  mys- 
tifying suspense.  At  length  Cloud  gasps :  "  Law- 
rence Pleasington !  " 

Lawrence  :  "  Garland  Cloud  ! " 

It  is  a  fact.  The  two  proud  and  daring  horse- 
men have  met  again,  after  more  than  fifteen  years 
since  they  last  met  and  parted  in  the  spectral 
darkness  of  the  lugubrious  pine  forests  of  North 
Carolina,  amid  the  ghostly  death-scene  prepara- 
tion, with  poor  Pleasington — as  it  appeared  and  as 
he  believed — in  the  launched  ferry  on  the  bosom 
of  the  dark  river.  Yes,  they  have  met  again 
amid  the  dark  and  dreary  shadows  of  a  living 
tomb — a  scene  more  terrible  than  that  in  which 
they  last  parted — ^for  them  the  grave  of  every 
earthly  hope.  They  are  woeful  wrecks  of  the 
past ;  walking  skeletons  of  their  former  selves ;  the 
sad  remains  of  two  young  and  handsome  soldiers. 

We  saw  them  pure,  true  and  innocent  as  the  for- 
est-bespangling, silvery  dew-drops  which  gleansed 
hke  pearly  gems  in  the  brilliant  rays  of  the  "  early, 
early  morning's "  summer-sunshine  of  that  July 
Sabbath,  as  they  rushed  with  flushed  cheeks, 
with  hearts  wildly  buoyant  with  youth  and  hope, 
and  with  souls  on  fire  across  the  fatal  plains  of 
Manassas,  into  the  iron  jaws  of  flaming  death. 

Poor  wretches !  With  what  longing  fondness 
their  minds  travel  back  to  rest  in  envy  on  that 
spot  where  slumber,  in  blissful  peace  and  tranquil 
repose,  the  crumbling  bones  of  so  many  who  then 
with  them  moved,  but  fell  and  died,  to  be  buried 
in  the  bloody  shroud  of  honor — the  soldier's  glori- 
ous winding-sheet  and  heroic  tomb,  so  dear  to  the 
memory  of  every  true  and  noble  heart. 

What  a  contrast  these  tAvo  relics  of  that  time 
now  present!  Here  they  are  engulfed  in  the 
seething  eddy  of  the  deepest  social  damnation. 
Cloud,  a  self -sacrificed  victim  of  circumstances  on 
the  unhallowed  altar  of  dark  Ambition:    Pleas- 


ington, the  innocent  and  pitiable  victim  of  the 
fiendish  machinations  of  a  diabolical  conspiracy, 
and  the  most  cruel  and  heartless  treachery,  that 
consigned  him  to  sixteen  years  in  the  raylcss 
gloom  of  a  dungeon  life. 

Tongue  may  never  depict,  pen  may  never  pict- 
ure the  nameless  torture  endured  by  this  hapless, 
ill-fated  young  man  during  all  those  long  days  of 
trying  agony  and  weary  nights  of  tedious  torment, 
each  in  itself  an  age  of  living  death. 

Think  of  this,  oh  ye  ministering  powers !  and 
beware  being  made  the  dupes  of  wicked  plotters. 
How  often  is  justice  perverted,  and  thus  led  to 
manacle  and  scourge  the  innocent!  Thus  are  they 
entangled  so  cunningly  in  the  meshes  of  deceptive 
falsehood  that  their  seeming  guilt  appears  more 
overwhelming,  clear  and  positive  than  truth  rarely 
ever  clothes  testimony.  So  thoroughly  convinc- 
ing does  such  evidence  seem,  that  it  is  whollj' 
beyond  the  ken  of  mortal  man  for  the  victim  to 
attempt  to  establish  innocence,  with  the  ghost  of 
a  chance  to  succeed.  Truly,  he  might  not  induce 
any  one  to  entertain  the  bare  idea  that  there  could 
exist  a  possibility  of  the  accusation  being  false. 

Oh  ye  pure  and  honest  hearts,  who  love  the 
human  race,  and  would  save  your  young  men 
from  i"iin  and  despair!  Here  are  now  before  you 
two  cliaracters  who  afford  the  material  substance 
out  of  which  lessons  of  incalculable  value  may 
be  drawn,  with  which  many  a  wayward  man  may 
be  warned  of  the  great  and  terrible  danger  in  which 
he  must  expect  to  find  himself  enthralled  unless 
he  changes  his  course. 

Those  who  cannot  be  deterred  from  going  on- 
ward in  the  road  to  this  earthly  hell,  by  the  ap- 
pealing voices — the  echoes  of  their  wail  of  woe 
— sent  forth  into  the  world  by  these  two  men,  to 
be  borne  onward  by  the  swift  wings  of  sweet 
freedom's  wind,  are  lost  indeed. 

Among  all  the  thousands  of  the  condemned 
here  in  the  dread  role  of  paying  penalties  for  the 
abuse  of  that  heritage  bequeathed  to  them  by 
Nature's  divine  and  equitable  law,  there  have  been 
few  others  who  approach  Garland  Cloud  and  Law- 
rence Pleasington  as  objects  that  furnish  subject- 
matter  coming  exclusively  from  the  heart  and 
the  mind.  But  the}''  aff'ord  material  to  make  a 
true  picture  of  that  torture  which  is  distinctly 


252 


I^ITSTIC  EOINJANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE   GREY. 


and  widely  separated  from  mere  penal  inconven- 
ience and  physical  pain.  This  is  a  picture,  such 
as  will  appeal  to  refined  hearts  and  lofty  minds: 
those  we  now  so  much  desire  to  reach  and  move 
with  awe  and  alarm  at  the  contemplation  of  the 
realities  of  a  state  in  which  flesh  and  blood  exist, 
that  is  so  dreadful  and  terrible  as  to  beggar  the 
power  of  language. 

As  Pleasington  is  an  innocent  victim,  his  suf- 
fering, as  a  matter  of  course,  is  different  from 
Cloud's,  and  is  not,  therefore,  as  forcibly  instruc- 
tive a  lesson  to  stay  the  erring  in  their  mad  career 
and  cause  them  to  reflect.  His  case  is  the  ex- 
ception, not  the  rule;  for  men  from  reputable 
Avalks  of  life  rarely  find  themselves  in  prison  with- 
out cause.  For  this  reason  we  shall  present  a 
much  larger  part  of  Cloud's  experience — very 
largely  in  verhatim  copies  of  his  own  letters. 

After  another  embarrassing  pause,  Pleasington 
speaks:  "G-arland, in  Heaven's  name!    Then  it  is 


you 


!     I  heard  that  a  Garland  Cloud  from  the 


semi-tropical  South  was  here,  but  never  dreamed 
that  he  was  my  once  enemy-friend. 

"  I  am  not  here  under  my  true  name.  You  are 
tlie  only  man  here  who  ever  has  recognized  me; 
and  there  are  very  few  who  ever  knew  me. 
Please  never  mention  my  name. 

"  Next  Sunday,  if  you  are  wilhng,  I  will  obtain 
permission  to  spend  the  day  with  you  in  your  cell, 
when  I  will  tell  you  all.  We  dare  not  stand 
here." 

Cloud  :  "Nothing  else  could  happen,  Lawrence, 
that  would  afTord  me  more  pleasure  here  than  to 
spend  a  day  with  you.  Come  by  all  means.  Until 
then,  adieu." 

Lawrence:  "I  will  not  disappoint  you.  Good- 
day." 

This  is  a  privilege  often  granted  men  of  long 
continued  good  record:  to  spend  a  Sunday  or 
other  holiday  in  the  cell  of  a  friend  until  just  be- 
fore the  night-watchmen  come  on  duty,  when  the 
visitors  return  to  their  own  cells  to  be  locked  up 
for  the  night. 

When  the  day  arrives,  and  the  two  ex-officers 
of  the  Blue  and  the  Grey  are  caged  together. 
Cloud  gives  Pleasington  a  hasty  sketch  of  his 
career  down  to  his  fall  and  final  doom.  Then 
Pleasington  proceeds  to  reciprocate. 


"Well,  Garland,"  he  says,  with  a  deep  drawn 
sigh,  "for  the  first  time  I  now  open  my  mouth  to 
speak  a  word,  either  directly  or  indirectly,  about 
the  true  nature  of  my  own  bitter  and  nameless 
Avoe  within  the  hearing  of  mortal  ears. 
»  "  My  first  day  of  convict-life  satisfied  me  that 
I  was  in  an  earthly  hell — with  demons  and  fiends, 
as  a  rule,  for  companions,  who  were  more  likely  to 
mock  me  with  low,  profane  and  vulgar  jeers  than 
to  sympathize  with  me  in  my  great  and  terrible 
affliction  and  sufiering,  which  I  then  thought 
would  drive  me  to  the  desperation  of  a  raving 
maniac.  I  resolved  to  keep  to  myself,  and  remain 
aloof  from  other  men — a  course  from  which  I  have 
never  departed. 

"  With  my  early  trouble,  affliction  and  cruel 
bereavement,  j^ou  are  familiar,  for  which  I  am 
really  thankful,  as  it  will  spare  me  the  pain  of  re- 
counting them  to  you. 

"  What  a  burden  of  misery  the  information  you 
have  just  imparted  to  me,  that  Oglethrop  and 
his  wife  know  that  I  am  innocent,  lifts  from  my 
crushed  mind.  Ah!  but  Garland,  the  mischief  can 
never  be  mended — it  is  irreparably  and  eternally 
sealed  in  its  fixed  destiny  by  the  cruel  sods  of 
the  grave. 

"Nothing  on  this  earth,  nor  in  the  blackest 
realms  of  the  Infernal  world,  was  ever  perpe- 
trated on  man  or  fiend  more  cruel  and  diatohcal 
than  the  vengeance  wreaked  upon  me. 

"  For  years  my  brain  was  forever  in  a  feverish 
state,  as  though  molten  lead  was  being  poured 
into  it.  The  pangs  of  my  heart  were  incessantly, 
whether  sleeping  or  Avaking,  as  acutely  excrucia- 
ting as  though  it  was  being  steadily  pierced  by  the 
point  of  a  revolving  dagger. 

"  Thus  I  lived  without  hope,  or  anything  else 
to  look  forward  to  as  a  source  of  relief,  but  death  ; 
which,  though  the  heavily -journeying  years 
quietly  and  tediously  plodded  along,  would  not 
come. 

"  But  for  the  deep  and  uneffaceable  imprint  of 
the  blessed  training  of  my  sainted  mother,  which 
kept  me  in  the  paths  of  honor  and  truth 
throughout  the  demoralizing  vicissitudes  of  the 
war,  I  should  have  committed  suicide.  Yet  I 
never  thought  of  it  only  with  a  thrill  of  shudder- 
ing horror,  that  was,  if  possible,  more  painful  than 


IVIEETIKG  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY  UNDER  A  CLOUD. 


253 


my  untold  anguish  o^  soul  and  racking  torture  of 
mind. 

"  I  at  length  became,  not  reconciled  and  insensi- 
ble to  my  cureless  malady,  but  I  taught  myself,\vith 
great  and  patient  efTort,  to  be  resigned  to  my  fate 
and  to  acquiesce  in  the  hard  decree  that  forced  ^ 
me  to  endure  what  could  not  be  cured. 

■'  I  resolved  to  live  for  the  great  Hereafter,  as  I 
have  lived,  am  continuing  to  hve,  and  shall  ever 
live  until  the  blessed  end  comes  at  last,  with  the 
fidelity  and  pious  devotion  of  a  most  zealous 
hermit. 

"  Don't  smile  incredulously,  Garland;  from  the 
depths  of  my  soul,  I  mean  it.  This  is  my  only 
source  of  comfort;  and  it  has  so  soothed  my 
intense  wretchedness  as  to  render  existence  less 
intolerable. 

"  Ah,  Garland,  there  is  no  other  place  in  this 
world  where  a  man  can — alone  with  himself  and 
the  spirit-consoling  communion  which  he  may 
enjoy  both  day  and  night  in  the  dirty  shop  and 
the  loathsome  cell,  in  defiance  of  walls  and  bars, 
with  the  Great  Eternal — lead  a  life  as  pixre  and 
blameless  as  it  is  possible  for  him  to  do  in  the 
soul-trying  position  and  experience  of  a  State 
prison,  far  removed  as  he  is  from  the  world  and 
its  evil  influences  and  temptations.  Especially 
true  is  this  of  those,  who,  like  me,  have  not  one 
glimmering,  flickering  ray  of  hope  beyond  their 
prison  walls. 

"  I  am  speaking  from  experience  and  realities 
that  should  appall  you.  Five  thousand  seven  hun- 
dred days  and  nights,  with  three  hundred  and 
fifty  yet  to  be  added  !     Think  of  it  a  moment! 

"  That  night  of  trial  and  agony  through  which 
I  passed,  under  the  scourge  of  that  cruel  rod 
which  was  forced  into  your  reluctant  hand  in  the 
North  Carolina  pine-woods,  was  rapture  of  bhss 
compared  with  the  same  number  of  hours  in  any 
one  of  all  my  dreary  thousands  of  days  of  prison 
life. 

"Oh  Garland  Cloud!  from  the  moment  that 
I  found  I  was  uninjured,  when  the  deafening 
shock  of  the  blinding  volley  had  passed  away,  up 
to  the  moment  when  I  was  arrested  and  con- 
fronted with  that  awful  charge,  there  was  no 
hour  nor  employment  of  my  life  so  sacred  but 
what  I  should  have  embraced  you  with  all  the 


ardent  enthusiasm  that  I  cherished  for,  or  could 
have  manifested  to,  the  dearest  objects  of  my 
heart.  I  well  knew  that  you  had  deliberately 
spared  my  life  by  loading  the  guns  with  hlank 
cartridges,  at  the  risk  of  forfeiting  your  own  for 
willful  disobedience  of  orders.  But  since  that 
more  cruel  tocsin  sounded  the  knell  to  my  last 
hope,  I  have  often,  often  reproached  you  most 
bitterly. 

"  Had  I  then  thus  perished  a  sacrifice  on  my 
Country's  altar,  she  would  have  inscribed  an  epi- 
taph of  honor  to  my  memory.  I  would  have 
been  mourned  by  fondly  loving  hearts ;  esteemed 
liy  all  who  knew  me  as  worthy  of  one  pious  tear- 
drop, such  as  is  merited  only  by  the  true  and  the 
brave — with  which  the  stranger-soldier's  grave  is 
often  bathed  by  strangers'  eyes  in  a  foreign  land. 

"  Oh,  but  now — but  now,  Cloud !  Pardon  my 
rising  tears  and  my  choking  voice's  huskiness. 
I  am  a  vagabond-outcast,  with  that  dear  country's 
brand  of  infamy  stamped  upon  my  degraded 
brow,  that  has  faced  the  battle-storm  so  many 
times  in  supporting  the  cause  I  loved  so  well.  And 
oh,  those  loving  hearts!  rent  in  twain,  shivered, 
sundered — all  these  hopeless  years  have  they 
been  moldering  beneath  the  sods  of  the  grave ! 
And  the  eyes  that  would  have  then  bathed  my 
grave,  and  the  kind  and  tender  hearts  that  would 
have  mourned  my  loss,  would  now  but  coldly 
gaze  upon  me  with  unpitying  contempt,  and 
spurn  me  with  unfeeling  disdain.  Such  have 
been  the  fiery  torture  and  gloom  of  my  terrible 
life ;  such  is  the  cheerlessness  of  its  unpromising 
future. 

"  But  I  have  run  partly  ahead  of  my  narrative, 
or  at  least  its  proper  order. 

"  I  have  observed  your  delicacy  in  abstaining 
from  asking  me  how  I  came  to  be  here,  after  the 
expiration  of  my  ten  years'  term  in  another  State, 
yet  I  will  now  tell  you. 

"  The  morning  that  I  left  the  gloom  of  that 
dreary  prison-tomb  behind  me,  and  emerged  into 
the  bright  glare  of  the  sun  of  liberty,  which  for 
me  had  no  more  cheering  anticipations  nor  com- 
forting assurances  than  those  bleak  scenes  of 
hopelessness  out  of  which  I  had  passed,  a  man, 
elegantly  attired,  of  refined  deportment  and  gen- 
tlemanly appearance,  took  the  seat  by  my  side  in 


254 


MYSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


the  car,  bound  for  my  destination,  whither  I  was 
going  without  object,  money,  or  friends. 

"  He  at  once  entered  into  conversation  with 
me,  and  informed  me  that  he  knew  of  the 
sad  history  of  my  case  and  of  my  innocence, 
and  had  come  over  expressly  to  meet  me.  He 
claimed  to  be  an  importer,  and  that  he  had  valu- 
able employment  for  me  in  connection  with  his 
large  and  rapidly  increasing  Southern  trade.  As 
a  matter  of  course,  I  realized  that  I  must  seek 
work,  and  I  at  once  seized  this  opportunity  as 
a  God-send. 

"  This  man  carried  me  to  his  suite  of  rooms,  in 
one  of  the  first  hotels  of  the  city,  and  rigged  me 
out  in  a  handsome  and  stylish  business  suit  of 
clothing. 

"  That  night  he  carried  me  out  to  sundry  places 
of  resort  for  business  men,  necessitating  a  very 
large  extent  of  walking,  which  much  fatigued  me. 

"  Just  before  midnight,  we  returned  to  his 
room,  where  he  assigned  me  one  of  the  beds. 
Being  weary,  I  at  once  retired,  and  was  soon 
soundly  sleeping. 

"I  awoke  after  dayhght.  It  was  a  violent 
shaking  by  a  policeman  that  awoke  me.  I  found 
myseK  a  prisoner.  The  interested  importer  was 
gone.  A  great  robbery  had  been  committed  in 
the  hotel.  Some  burglars'  tools  and  articles  of 
the  stolen  property  were  in  the  room  with  me. 
The  hotel  people  knew  nothing  about  me,  or 
that  I  was  an  occupant  of  the  room. 

"  The  theory  was  that  I  had  been  prostrated 
from  inhahng  the  chloroform  which  had  been  ad- 
ministered to  the  victims  of  the  robbery,  and  thus 
rendered  unable  *to  make  good  my  escape  with 
my  alleged  accomphces.  The  case  and  proof 
were  clear  against  me. 

"  At  nine  o'clock  the  previous  morning,  I  had 
been  liberated.  At  the  same  hour  on  the  morning 
of  which  I  am  speaking,  I  occupied  a  cell  in  the 
jail.     I  did  not  have  one  day  of  liberty, 

"  The  man  furnished  me  with  employment — 
steady  employment  for  six  years  and  seven 
months — the  net  time  I  was  doomed  to  serve  in 
this  prison. 

"  This  is  the  whole  story.  I  cannot  but  imag- 
ine it  was  the  guiding  finger  of  Providence  that 
brought  this  about,  by  so  directing  events  as  to 


cause  them  to  produce  this  result,  for  some  pur- 
pose entirely  !:iidden  from  me  in  the  impenetrable 
obscurity  of  the  deepest  mystery,  but  yet  which 
still  must  be  for  some  wisely  good  purpose,  and 
all  for  the  best.  Viewing  it  as  such,  I  have 
acquiesced  in  it  with  patient  and  uncomplaining 
resignation." 

Cloud  :  "  Oh,  Heavens !  the  execrable  villain ! 
He  was  either  specially  employed  by  the  active 
participants  in  the  first  diabolisms  perpetrated 
against  you,  who  were  interested  in  putting  you 
out  of  the  way,  or  he  was  merely  seeking  for 
a  victim  unknown  in  the  city,  and  chanced  to 
strike  you. 

"But,  Pleasington,  we  have  now  consumed 
half  the  time  you  are  permitted  to  remain  with 
me  in  recounting  our  mutual  woes — the  bitter 
and  trying  realities  of  life  which  we  have  each 
known  and  are  now  experiencing  since  the  in- 
terruption of  our  occasionally  spasmodic  relations, 
which  grew  out  of  our  strange  acquaintance  and 
were  maintained  by  our  stranger  ties  of  sym- 
pathy. But,  my  dear  fellow-miserable,  those  are 
things  of  the  lamentable  and  deplorable  past — 
things  that  are  now  buried  in  the  grave  of  our 
hopes,  with  the  irreclaimable  days  that  cannot 
be  recalled — those  mournful  days  that  are  dead. 
With  them  what  have  we  now  to  do  ?  Oh,  my 
poor  friend,  it  is  of  the  gloomy  present  and 
the  cheerless  future  that  we  should  think  I  Let 
us  talk  and  counsel  together  of  them. 

"  As  to  ourselves,  for  ourselves,  we  are  as  dead 
as  those  friends  whom  we  once  loved  so  well 
The  early  broken  ties  that  severed  our  connec- 
tion and  communion  with  them,  which  we  have 
mourned  so  long,  are  no  wider  sundered  than 
the  ties  which  linked  us  to  earthly  happiness 
and  to  mortal  hope.  But  for  our  country — our 
reunited  and  regenerated  country — let  us  hve  and 
work. 

"  In  our  youth's  .summer — yes,  from  its  latter 
spring-time  to  its  mid-summer  days — we  offered 
up  those  tender,  promising,  hopeful,  loving  young 
lives,  that  had  never  known  a  breath  of  sorrow's 
wrecking  winds,  nor  felt  a  pinch  fi-om  despair's 
blighting  frosts,  a  sacrifice — yes,  a  daily  sacrifice — 
throughout  the  dark  and  trying  years  of  that 
long  and  wasting  war,  upon  its  unhallowed  altar 


MEETING  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GKEY  UNDEK  A  CLOUD. 


255 


of  blood.  Then  this  was  demanded  of  us — this 
truly  noble  sacrifice. 

"  Now  let  us  devote  our  bitterly  unhappy  and 
most  undesirable  lives — lives  upon  which  we 
place  not  one  poor,  crooked,  blunt-pointed  pin's 
value — to  that  same  country,  whether  she  will 
have  the  sacrifices,  which  she  may  deem  too  un- 
worthy, or  no.  We  can  do  this.  We  can  com- 
mence now  and  here  to  wage  war,  relentless  and 
uncompromising  war,  upon  that  nlonster  enemy 
of  our  race.  Crime.  That  destroys  and  damns  all 
whom  it  can  seduce  from  honor's  paths  or  vir- 
tue's thrones. 

"  Oh,  let  us  send  out  from  here — from  this 
our  prison  home,  this  veritable,  earthly  hell, 
and  the  foster  child  of  that  eternal  hell — into 
that  world  of  hberty  where  the  pure  and  uncon- 
taminated  air  fans  with  its  fragrant  breezes  and 
cools  with  its  soft  and  balmy  zephyrs  the  fever- 
ish brow  and  the  care-wrecked  brain ;  and  where 
the  beauteous  sun  shines  in  resplendent  bril- 
liancy, undimmed  by  the  darksome  shadows  and 
mystic  gloom  of  prison  walls,  such  a  startling 
and  piercing  wail  of  woe  that  it  will  enter  deep, 
down  deep,  into  the  depth  of  men's  souls." 

Lawrence:  "Ah,  Cloud!  Let  me  take  your 
hand  in  both  my  hands,  while  I  tell  you  that 
on  this  question  our  hearts  beat  in  unison, 
and  that  heart  and  soul,  mind  and  body,  I  am 
with  you  m  anything,  in  all  things,  that  we  can 
do,  or  attempt  to  do,  in  this  grand  cause ;  which, 
if  properly  advocated  and  appropriately  con- 
strued, rivals  the  cause  and  the  works  of  Divine 
grace  itself.  For  upon  the  radical  principles  con- 
tained in  this  criminal  question — the  principles 
which  should  be,  and  are,  the  ingredients  from 
which  might  be  compounded  a  potent  antidote 
that  would  largely  counteract  its  baneful  influ- 
ences— rest  all  social  order  and  security,  all  law 
and  all  religion.  But  how  may  we  best  promote 
its  advancement  ?  " 

Cloud  :  "  By  writing  letters  to  the  utmost  ex- 
tent. Then  there  is  a  man  in  the  world  par- 
tially known  to  you,  and  somewhat  better  known 
to  me,  M^ho  designs  writing  a  book  on  this  sub- 
ject. He  already  has  a  large  part  of  the  essen- 
tially material  facts  collected  and  arranged  in 
order.     To  these  he  is  constantly  adding  more, 


either  to  fill  up  discrepancies  or  to  extend  the 
scope  of  his  design. 

"  He  knows  something  of  the  outhnes  of  the 
stories  of  our  personal  experience,  and  that  of 
those  who  have  been  more  or  less  blended  with  us 
— such  as  have  been,  either  directly  or  indirectly, 
the  means  that  efiFected  ours,  or  those  who,  in 
their  turn,  have  been  effected  by  us.  In  a 
general,  crude,  imperfect  way,  he  knows  these 
mere  fragmentary  sketches.  Let  us  supply  the 
deficiencies. 

"  From  time  to  time  I  wiU  send  you  a  memo- 
randum of  the  feature  of  information  that  you 
can  furnish,  that  is  necessary  to  complete  a  link 
with  mine,  which  you  can  fill  in  with  abbreviated 
answers  to  the  questions,  in  the  spaces  left 
between  them  for  that  purpose,  on  the  sheet  of 
brown  paper  which  can  pass  to  and  fro  between 
us  by  the  trusty  hands  of  our  mutual  friend, 
'  The  Old  Man' ;  and  I  will  revise  and  supply  our 
consolidated  reminiscences  to  the  architect  of  the 
work. 

"  Both  your  identity  and  my  own,  together 
with  that  of  our  friends,  as  well  as  that  of  our 
enemies,  shall  be  sacredly  guarded  against  detec- 
tion, for  which  I  will  be  personally  accountable 
to  you  here  and  hereafter.  I  now  most  solemnly 
pledge  myself  never  to  expose  nor  to  reveal 
to  any  one,  in  the  most  indefinite  and  indirect 
manner,  anything  whatever  relative  to  your  true 
personality." 

Lawrence:  "All  right.  Cloud.  If  any  man  on 
this  earth  could  trust  you  with  his  very  soul's 
salvation,  I  am  that  man." 

Cloud  :  "Now,  then,  we  have  disposed, of  that 
part  of  our  problematical  question  which  relates 
to  the  present.  Yet  the  most  serious  of  all  still 
remains  to  be  considered :  that  part  which  relates 
to  the  future." 

Lawrence  :  "  Ah  I  of  all  the  sad  features  of 
life  with  me,  that  is  by  far  the  saddest — my  dread- 
ful, gloomy  future.  What  am  I  to  do  to  sustain 
life  and  promote  the  cause  which  we  have  re- 
solved to  espouse,  and  to  which  we  have  mutu- 
ally pledged  ourselves  to  devote  our  unpromising 
lives  ?  This  is  a  question  that  puzzles  and 
staggers  me  so  much,  is  so  appalling,  that  its 
bare  contemplation  makes  me  shudder,  and  feel 


256 


MYSTIC   KOMAXCES   OF   THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


that  it  would  be  a  blessing  if  I  could  never  pass 
out  beyond  this  terrible  portal  except  as  inani- 
mate clay.  Yet  I  fancy  to  me  that  great  mercy 
is  a  boon  that  will  be  denied." 

Cloud  :  "  You  must  confide  all  to  Oglethrop, 
who  is,  with  his  wife,  your  unchanged  and  change- 
less friend.  They  together  know  your  former  in- 
nocence, and  the  damnable  nature  of  your  perse- 
cution, which  they  deplore  most  sincerely.  They 
sympathize  with  you  with  all  their  hearts.  Your 
last  calamity  will  but  serve  to  strengthen  their 
friendship  and  to  increase  their  solicitude  for  you. 
You  must  contrive  to  get  one  letter  to  him  over 
the  'underground  mail  route,  telling  him  all. 
After  that,  you  can  correspond  with  him  with 
impunity,  and  directly,  under  the  name  by  which 
you  are  known  here. 

"  Harman  and  Flowers  will  have  the  same  de- 
gree of  SYinpathetic  fidelity  for  you  as  your 
youthful  and  faithful  comrade  Oglethrop. 

"  And  again,  there  still  is  that  fatherly  friend 
now  sinking  beneath  the  weight  of  years  and  the 
burdensome  cares  of  an  active  business  life,  Silas 
Worthington,  who  is  superior  to  all  uncharita- 
bleness  and  conventional  compunctions,  will  take 
you  by  the  hand  and  reenshrine  you  in  his  noble 
heart,  that  never  yet  has  thrilled  with,  an  un- 
worthy impulse,  nor  rankled  with  the  pangs  in- 
flicted by  that  stinging  lash — remorse  of  conscience. 

"  These  good  people  will  send  you  into  active 
usefulness,  to  be  regenerated  by  the  benignant 
influence  of  the  mellow  rays  of  sunshine ;  the 
soothing  freshness  of  perfume-laden  zephyrs  ex- 
haled by  never-  fading  flowers ;  and  a  thousand 
other  enchanting  charms  of  bounteously  generous 
nature,  to  be  found  nowhere  save  in  that  earthly 
Paradise  that  can  exist  but  beneath  'Southern 
dream-land  skies.' " 

Lawrence  :  "  You  have  pertinent  reason.  Cloud  ; 
a  will  that  nothing  can  tame;  a  courage  that 
nothing  can  subdue.  I  believed  that  this  course 
might  possibly  be  open  to  me;  but  I  wanted  cour- 
age and  faith.  I  never  should  have  attempted  to 
avail  myself  of  the  great  benefits  that  it  might 
promise  to  bestow.  But  now  I  shall  try  it  with  a 
hope  that  it  may  enable  me  to  spend  the  remainder 
of  my  sad  days  in  promoting  the  welfare  and  ad- 
vancing ths  interests  of  humanity. 


''Now,  what  of  yourself?  Whither  tend  your 
masterful  experience  and  yovu"  all  but  matchless 
talents  ?  " 

Cloud:  "Oh,  my  friend,  that  is  a  question 
deeply  fraught  with  the  jDroblematical  and  mys- 
terious unknown.  If  as  I  will,  in  the  same  path- 
way, amid  the  same  blessed  scenes  as  those  indi- 
cated to  you. 

"But  I  am  not  as  you — innocent,  and  pure, 
and  true,  and  good.  My  one  puny  hand  is  reek- 
ing with  crime  to  stain  a  thousand  hands  with 
indelible  infamy.  My  wretched  life — ^little,  if  any, 
less  hopeless,  and  almost  as  utterly  a  stranger  to 
happiness  as  yours  has  been,  from  the  very  day 
upon  which  I  beheld  the  battle  flag  of  my  idola- 
trously  cherished  Confederacy  struck  for  the  last 
time :  the  same  trying  moment  when  I  5'ielded 
up  that  sword  forever,  that  had  flashed  so  often 
and  so  long  amid  smoke  and  flame  on  blood- 
slippery  fields  in  her  vain  and  fruitless  defense — 
has  been,  throughout  the  tediously  weary  hours 
of  every  day  of  its  existence,  naught  but  a  mashed 
lie.  And  from  its  enslaving  chains  I  have  never, 
with  all  my  mortal  courage,  been  able  to  extricate 
myself,  nor  to  emancipate  my  shackled  nature. 

"Oh,  Pleasington!  the  gi-eatest  curse  on  this 
sin-polluted  earth  is  moral  cowardice,  and  that 
has  been  mine. 

"  Before  the  charged  cannon's  mouth  I  could 
stand  and  face  certain  death  unmoved,  or  suffer 
the  anguish  of  having  my  body  hacked  to  pieces 
with  sabres,  without  uttering  a  groan. 

"Yet  I  have  fled,  and  still  keep  flying  and 
seeking  to  hide  away  from  a  mythical  shadow, 
which,  if  promptly  and  properly  met  in  the  very 
outset,  at  the  first  indication  of  its  approach, 
could  not  have  been,  in  the  most  serious  form 
that  it  could  have  possibly  assumed,  under  no 
circumstances,  a  matter  of  greater  consequence 
than  that  of  occupying  a  vedette's  post  on  but 
one  stormy,  wintry  night. 

"  It  has  plunged  me  deeper  and  deeper  still 
into  the  mazy  labyrinths  of  perplexing,  madden- 
ing difficulty,  until  of  late  I  have  neither  been 
swayed  nor  led,  but  driven,  absolutely  driven,  by 
the  force  of  concentrated  and  inexplicable  cir- 
cumstances, directed  by  some  mysterious  and 
supernatural  hand. 


MEETING  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY  UNDER  A  CLOUD. 


257 


"But  here  is  a  letter  from  an  able  minister,  in 
answer  to  one  written  him  from  the  jail,  in  which 
I  intimated  what  I  desired  to  attempt  for  suffer- 
ing humanity.  Read  it  aloud,  Pleasington,  I  de- 
sire to  hear  it." 

Lawrence:  "Poor  Cloud!  How  I  pity  you! 
But  I  will  read  what  the  good  man  has  to  say. 
Perchance  it  may  edify  and  console  us  in  our 
gloomy  captivity." 

Cloud:  "But  wait  a  moment,  Pleasington.  I 
have  a  letter  here  written  last  Sunday  and  Sun- 
day night,  in  answer  to  the  one  you  hold  now  in 
your  hand.  It  is  addressed  to  the  Sabbath- 
school  of  that  minister's  church. 

"I  was  a  member  of  the  Bible-class,  and  the 
recitations  of  the  lesson  were  always  so  fascina- 
ting and  interesting  as  to  absorb  me  for  one  hour 
into  soothing  obhviousness  of  the  past,  and  to 
wean  me  from  the  weary  and  haunting  dream  of 
its  ever-crushing  bitterness. 

"  Oh  that  I  could  have  thus  lived  on,  or  that 
I  could  have  then  expired  before  the  last  echoes 
of  the  closing  line  of  the  parting  song  died  away, 
and  left  me  relapsing  back  into  the  consciousness 
of  the  cruel  yet  merited  reality  that  I  was  merely 
merging  from  the  soothing  influence  of  the  care- 
beguihng  opiate  of  a  broken  spell ! 

"  To-morrow  this  letter  will  be  mailed.  I  wish 
you  to  read  it  after  you  hate  read  the  other,  as 
it  is  a  pen  picture  of  what  I  dream  is,  should  be, 
and  will  be  true,  in  a  great  measure,  in  the  Hves 
of  all  men  who  wander  down  from  the  high  road 
of  truth  and  honor  into  devious  and  forbidden 
paths.  And  it  is,  moreover,  my  true  self,  as 
nearly  as  it  is  consistent  with  the  harmony  of 
things  for  me  to  be  identified  with  truth." 

Lawrence:  "Oh,  my  God,  Cloud!  you  have 
doubtless  been  in  one  perpetual  earthly  hell  be- 
yond the  shadow  of  these  dreary  walls,  no  less 
terrilDle  than  the  one  you  are  now  in.  But  to 
read  the  letters.  I  am  nervous  with  anxiety  to 
devour  their  contents. 

"  '  SUMMERVILLE,  S.  C,  1880. 

"  '  Col.  GrARLAND  Cloud  : 

"  '^My  Dear  Sir : 
"  '  In  consequence  of  my  absence  from  the 
City  by  the  Sea.  your  letter  of  the  1st  inst.  was 
not  seen  by  me   until  several  days  after  its  pub- 


lication :  hence  my  delay  in  replying  to  it.  If 
you  have  therefore  attributed  my  silence  to  any 
other  cause,  I  beg  you  no  longer  to  entertain  the 
thought  that,  under  any  other  circumstances,  I 
would  have  been  so  long  in  giving  you  the  as- 
surance that  I  deeply  feel  for  you  in  the  terrible 
misfortune  which  has  befallen  you. 

"  'The  first  intelhgence  that  I  received  of  your 
downfall  was  a  severe  shock  and  sore  disappoint- 
ment to  me.  It  was  a  thing  that  I  could  not 
under  any  circumstances  have  thought  it  jDOssible 
for  you  to  do.  Imagine,  then,  how  great  must 
have  been  the  shock  when  I  read  in  the  paper 
that  you  had  fallen  a  victim  to  the  subtle  temp- 
ter's deceitful  allurements  and  enticements,  which 
set  before  you  in  a  flattering  manner  the  certain 
and  speedy  way  of  acquiring  riches.  My  mind 
immediately  reverted  to  that  passage  of  Scripture 
which  says:  'Make  not  haste  to  become  rich.' 
And  I  thought  that  you  had  certainly  forgotten 
that  'there  is  nothing  hid  which  shall  not  be 
revealed;  for,  the  eyes  of  the  Lord  are  in  every 
place,  behokUng  the  good  and  the  evil.' 

"'I  am  perfectly  aware  of  the  fact,  however, 
that  there  are  moments  and  hours  in  which  the 
minds  of  men  are  ready  to  seize  upon  anything 
which  promises  a  relief  to  their  jjerplexed  souls ; 
and  that  these  times  are  such  as  are  fraught 
with  the  greatest  temptations  and  the  strongest 
enticements  to  do  wrong.  These  are  the  great- 
est burdens  of  men's  souls,  and  require  more 
than  ordinary  courage  to  resist  and  vanquish. 
The  strongest  men  often  fall  victims  to  these 
allurements,  and  sometimes  the  best  men — those 
who  are  known  and  respected  for  their  high 
Cliristian  character — have  fallen  into  the  clutches 
of  the  deceiver  and  tempter.  Hence  I  do  not 
think  that  it  is  charitable  to  censure  and  blame 
too  severely  those  who  in  an  unguarded  moment 
yield  to  the  dulcet  song  of  the  siren  and  the 
flattering  deceits  of  the  tempter.  I  give  you,  there- 
fore, the  assurance  that,  notwithstanding  the 
greatness  of  the  surprise  and  the  severeness  of 
the  disappointment  which  I  felt  when  I  learned 
of  your  unfortunate,  and,  I  must  say,  vain  and 
sinful  attempt  to  deceive  and  do  wrong,  I  felt 
no  lack  of  interest  in  you,  no  decrease  of 
solicitude  for  you,  and  no  want  of  pity  for  you. 


258 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


Your  case  incited  witliiii  ine  mingled  feelings 
or  commiseration  ffnd  compassion.  I  actually 
grieved  over  your  downfall,  and  wished  a  thou- 
sand times  over  that  such  had  not  been  your  case. 

"'Since  reading  your  letter,  I  think  I  speak 
truly  when  I  say  to  you,  that  my  pity  for  you  has 
grown  stronger  and  my  sorrow  has  become  deeper; 
for  I  see,  from  the  view  which  you  have  given 
of  the  temptations  by  which  you  were  assailed, 
how  strong  and  great  were  the  difficulties  which 
you  had  to  encounter.  And  just  here  let  me 
thank  you  for  that  letter,  I  am  glad  that  you 
wrote  h  ;  for  it  sets  before  the  world  the  ex- 
perience of  one  tried  by  temptation,  and  shows 
how  the  tempter  entices  those  whom  he  desires 
to  entrap.  I  believe  that  its  publication  will 
have  a  beneficial  efi'ect  upon  the  lives  of  many 
young  men,  and  that  the  characters  and  souls  of 
many  who  read  it  will  be  saved  from  ignoble 
deeds  and  irretrievable  disgrace  and  degradation. 

'"  I  am  not  certain  but  that  your  misfortune  and 
serious  calamity  may  prove  to  you  a  greater 
blessing  than  your  conduct  has  proved  a  loss. 
God  in  his  providence  may  have  permitted  you 
to  become  the  victim  of  the  tempter  in  order  to 
make  you  the  instrument  of  warning  and  turning 
others  from  the  ways  of  evil.  I  doubt  not  but 
that  great  and  important  issues  hinge  upon  the 
temptations  to  which  you  yielded. 

" '  The  ways  of  God  are  mysterious,  and  He 
uses  various  agents  to  accomplish  His  purposes; 
and  who  knows  but  what  He  has  permitted  your 
good  name  to  become  disreputable  among  men, 
and  your  honorable  character  to  become  stained 
with  the  pollution  of  a  great  crime,  in  order  that 
you  may  be  a  prominently  striking  object  of 
warning  to  arrest  others  now  on  the  same  road 
to  ruin,  as  well  as  for  the  especial  purpose  of 
bringing  you  to  a  sense  of  your  own  danger,  and 
of  making  you  a  sharer  in  the  blessings  of  his 
salvation  ?  You  have  not,  therefore,  such  a  great 
loss  to  deplore,  as  it  may  now  seem  to  you  that 
you  have,  if  you  should  benefitthe  human  race  and 
gain  a  title  to  an  inheritance  of  God's  salvation 
in  heaven,  which  it  is  not  impossible  for  you  to 
do,  though  you  may  consider  yourself  the  great- 
est of  sinners. 

"'Come  now,  and    let    us    reason   together; 


'  though  your  sins  be  as  scarlet,  they  shall  be 
white  as  snow.'  I  would  not  then  encourage 
you  in  the  idea  which  j'ou  entertain  of  your 
spiritual  condition.  I  do  not  believe  that  the 
offense  of  which  you  have  been  guilty  is  the 
greatest  iniquity  that  you  could  have  committed, 
though  it  be  great  enough  to  cause  you  disgrace 
among  men,  and  great  enough  to  damn  you  to 
destruction,  yet  not  great  enough  so  that  the 
mercy  of  God  cannot  reach  it,  nor  so  great 
that  the  charity  of  men  cannot  condone  and 
palliate  it.  Others  in  the  world  have  been  guilty 
of  more  atrocious  crimes  and  have  perpetrated 
fouler  deeds,  and  yet  they  found  mercy  and 
obtained  pardon,  and  experienced  peace.  I 
would,  therefore,  counsel  and  encourage  you  not 
to  give  way  to  despondent  or  despairing  feelings 
as  regards  your  future  destiny.  Do  thyself, 
therefore,  no  harm,  but  be  faithful  to  yourself ; 
to  the  cause  of  humanity,  which  you  are  well 
cy^ialified  and  able  to  render  inestimable  service 
in  the  very  way  indicated  in  your  letter;  and  to 
the  cause  o'f  honor,  right  and  truth,  and  all  will 
end  for  the  Dest. 

"  '  Let  me  now  assure  you  that  you  have  my 
sincere  sympathy,  and  that  my  prayers  daily  as- 
cend to  God  in  your  behalf. 

"  '  Now,  a  few  words  in  reference  to  your  father's 
family.  It  will  give  me  great  pleasure  when  I 
return  to  my  charge  fo  do  all  that  I  can  to  con- 
sole and  comfort  them.  I  will  also  use  every 
effort  to  prevent  them  from  being  made  the  objects 
of  unjust  proscription  and  persecution.  So  far  as 
I  am  able,  I  will  endeavor  to  extend  to  them  that 
charity  and  sympathy  which  are  due  them  in 
their  distressed  and  sad  circumstances,  and  to 
have  others  do  the  same. 

"  '  I  am  glad  to  learn  that  your  term  of  confine 
ment  is  to  be  comparatively  short.  It  is  enough, 
however,  I  think,  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  justice. 

"  '  Please  let  me  hear  from  you,  if  you  are  able 
to  write,  and  give  me  anything  you  can  say  that 
may  be  used  as  'a  weapon  against  that  alluring 
cause  that  brought  you  to  grief  and  ruin. 

"  'With  many  prayers  for  your  welfare  and  safety, 
I  remain,  your  true  friend  and  sincere  sympathizer, 

"  '  W.  Henry  D , 

"  'Minister  Presbyterian  Church.' 


MEETING  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY  UNDEE  A  CLOUD. 


251> 


"Ah,  Garland,  that  is  one  manly  and  noble 
Christian  letter." 

Cloud  :  "  Yes,  sir ;  I  have  taken  that  letter  for 
my  anchor  of  faith,  by  which  I  am  resolved  to 
seek  to  cling  ever  in  all  the  relations  with  the 
affairs  of  this  life  that  it  is  possible  for  me  to  hold 
with  mankind. 

''It  is  this  letter  that  has  confirmed  me  in  a 
fixed  and  changeless  resolution  as  to  my  course, 
in  a  line  of  duty  while  here,  that  is  now  perfectly 
clear  to  me,  but  about  which  I  before  wavered 
and  hesitated.  But  that  I  shall  now  strive  to  fol- 
low, come  weal,  come  woe,  in  the  direction  iu 
which  you  are  pledged  to  accompany  and  assist 
me.  For  my  part  of  all  this,  that  letter  is  the 
strengthening  support  to  a  hitherto  unsoUd  and 
unsteady  foundation. 

"  The  answer  to  the  other  letter,  which  you  are 
now  to  read,  may  have  much  to  do  with  my  plans 
for  the  future,  be'cause  I  fancy  that  it  must  elicit 
some  good  and  practical  advice  worthy  to  be  in- 
corporated in  my  general  plan — possibly  to  mod- 
ify, if  not  to  model,  its  predominating  features. 
What  the  nature  of  that  answer  will  be  cannot, 
as  a  matter  of  course,  be  anticipated  by  the  vague 
and  uncertain  deductions  of  mere  conjecture. 
Assuming  that  it  will  be  of  the  most  discourag- 
ing character,  or  of  the  most  inappropriate  forms 
of  precepts,  then  it  would  in  no  wise  effect  the 
main  bent  of  my  purpose,  which  has  been  already 
rather  crudely  mapped  out,  subject  to  necessary 
modifications. 

"  After  you  have  read  my  letter,  we  will  then 
discuss  that  feature  a  bit.  Please  read  to  me.  I 
want  to  hear  it  in  another  voice  than  my  own, 
in  order  that  I  may  the  better  judge  of  its  merits." 

Lawrence  :  "  I  perceive  that  you  are  deeply 
laying  the  plans  for  a  universal  and  most  glorious 
campaign.  May  it  be  successful.  I  will  now 
proceed  to  read  your  letter. 

"  '  Sunday,  October,  1880. 

"  'Newnan-street  Presbyterian  Sabbath-school, 
City  by  the  Sea. 

"  ^Friends  of  other  days.- 

"  '  Words  have  no  adequate  power  to 
fulfill  the  mission  of  conveying  to  you  the  thoughts 
and  feelings  of  my  mind  and  heart :  the  vivid, 


realistic  picture  which  they  would  outline  and 
paint,  and  which  I  desire  to  transmit  and  suspend 
to  your  view  in  a  light  of  transparent  brilliancy, 
and  to  impress  it  on  the  tablets  of  your  mem- 
ories in  glowing  and  indelible  letters. 

"  '  As  an  example  to  man,  it  stands  out  in  bold, 
distorted,  hideous  reUef,  heralding  in  every  tint 
and  shade  of  its  grim,  ghastly,  glaring,  fiendish 
visage,  the  shrill, discordant, piercing  notes  of  warn- 
ing— which  would  to  God  they  could  resound 
from  every  house-top,  from  evety  hill,  and  in  every 
valley  throughout  this  vast  and  mighty  land  i 

" '  To  you,  good  people,  they  would  be  only  idle, 
meaningless  sounds.  Good  to-day,  and  you  think 
that  you  are  forever  safe.    Alas,  that  forever ! 

"  '  Be  not  over  self-confident.  Experience  forces 
the  conviction  that  the  men  are  few  who,  under 
some  extraordinary  force  of  circumstance  and 
peculiar  temptation,  goaded  to  madness  either 
by  distress,  by  pride,  or  by  ambition,  might  not 
be  influenced  to  take  some  rash  step  that  would 
cause  the  vibrations  of  the  heart  ever  after  to  thrill 
and  tremble  with  regret,  and  burning  shame  to 
Wight  life's  fondest  hopes  and  embitter  its  every 
joy,  demanding  the  pathetic  exclamation  of  old 
mother  Eve  :  '  Oh,  unexpected  stroke,  worse  than 
of  death ! '  Creating  a  pang  of  deeper  sorrow  than 
the  wail  above  the  dead !  Hopelessly  wrecking 
life  on  the  dreary  stream  of  Time. 

" '  What  lesson  is  so  unerring  as  that  of  expe- 
rience ?  Of  what  other  benefit  to  mankind  can  I 
now  ever  be,  but  to  give  them  mine  ?  What  other 
duty  remains  for  me  to  perform  in  this  world? 
What  else  to  live  for,  so  much  as  a  day  ? 

" '  This  duty  to  my  race  performed,  then  the  dark 
and  lonely  grave,  where  alone  there  can  be  found 
blissful  quietude  and  endless  repose. 

"  '  All  this  alone  is  of  no  consequence  to  the  so- 
cial world ;  but  the  lessons  which  my  dark  chap- 
ters teach  are  full  of  grave  import.  They  teach 
that  man  is  ever  in  danger  of  faUing,  and  the  in- 
estimable cost  of  such  a  fall. 

"  '  Furthermore,  they  contain  a  theme  fraught 
with  the  deepest  interest  to  society :  the  momen- 
tous problem  of  the  after  lives  of  the  fallen. 
Whether  there  exists  a  possibility  for  their  refor- 
mation and  redemption ;  whether  they  will  be 
permitted  to  return  to  lives  of  usefulness  and  honor; 


260 


MYSTIC  KOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


what  will  be  the  path  of  duty  society  will  expect 
them  to  follow  ?  or  whether  they  may  not  be  re- 
garded as  dangerous  outlaws,  and  thus  be  driven 
to  become  confirmed  enemies  of  society,  contami- 
nating others,  increasing  the  records  of  crime, 
undermining  the  safety  and  peace  of  society,  so 
that  it  must  ever  rest  on  the  brittle,  treacherous 
crust  of  a  smoldering  volcano  ? 

" '  This  is  a  subject  which  I  have  resolved  to  in- 
vestigate with  a  tireless  zeal  and  an  impartial, 
unselfish  philosophy,  and  to  bestow  upon  man- 
kind, in  some  shape  or  other,  all  the  benefit  that 
is  contained  in  the  sad  lessons  which  this  pain- 
ful subject  teaches,  whose  lightest  burden  to  me 
«  the  doleful  echo  of  that  terrible  word,  Kuin ! 

"  'Again  and  again  I  take  a  calm,  retrospective 
review  of  the  past,  and  seek  to  find  in  all  the 
course  of  my  tempest-tossed  life  a  true  solution 
of  the  cause  or  causes  that  led  me  on  and  down 
to  a  fate  like  this.  It  must  have  been  self-confi- 
dent, self-willed  ambition;  and,  perhaps  added 
to  this  was  the  blunting  of  the  finer  sensibilities 
of  nature  by  long-continued  and  unparalleled 
misfortunes.  Ambition  in  war  induced  reckless 
exposure  to  secure  promotion.  In  business,  it 
enslaved  me. 

"  '  For  fifteen  years  I  was  a  stranger  to  recrea- 
tion, pleasure,  social  intercourse,  and  influence; 
caring  far  less  for  gain  than  for  rank  and  position 
acquired  from  the  fame  of  my  transactions;  and 
from  the  renown  of  the  extraordinaiy  capacity 
required  to  handle  them.  I  was  in  no  way  in- 
temperate ;  and  I  was  unknown  in  the  haunts  of 
vice,  mostly  from  disinclination,  and  partly  be- 
cause both  were  fatal  to  my  ambitious  schemes. 

"  'An  early  social  disappointment  refused  to  be 
healed  by  distance  and  time. 

"  '  I  sought  the  unfriendly  shores  of  a  foreign 
land,  and  there  eagerly  plunged  into  the  madden- 
ing crowd,  without  finding  a  soothing  balm. 

" '  After  many  years  of  toil  from  dawn  until 
midnight,  I  acquired  hoards  of  gold ;  but  a  sudden 
revolutionary  crisis  swept  it  away,  almost  in  a 
day. 

"  '  Then,  a  broken,  hopeless  man,  I  sought  an 
asylum  on  your  genial  and  friendly  shores. 

"  '  The  first  year  was  an  unbroken  chapter  of 
sore  trials  and  losses. 


"  'After  tliis  period,  so  bitterly  painful,  had 
passed  away,  I  found  an  opening  for  a  road  to 
Avealth  and  influence,  but  distant  a  few  years. 

" '  Then  came  the  temptation  promising  this 
brilliant  success,  with  the  stroke  of  a  single  sea- 
son's business,  that  hurled  me  down  the  yawning 
abyss  into  a  gulf  of  cruel  and  unmitigated  despair. 

"  '  For  the  past  and  the  present,  I  neither  de- 
serve nor  do  I  desire  pity. 

" '  I  am  not  an  ignorant,  inexperienced  man. 
The  experience  of  an  average  Ufe-time  has  been 
crowded  into  the  space  of  twenty  years.  My 
commercial  education  is  consummate,  and  fixes 
upon  me  the  grave  responsibihty  of  having  capa- 
city to  be  among  the  representative  men  in  any 
sphere  of  business.  My  talents,  which  even  when 
'unmerciful  disaster  followed  fast,  and  followed 
faster '  with  crushing  blows,  should  have  been  only 
a  shinmg  light  to  guide  the  inexperienced,  have 
stooped  to  the  basest  infamy.  Had  success  crowned 
the  hapless  eflfbrt,  it  would  not,  with  all  its  motives 
of  purity,  have  been  fairly  acquired.  Under  or- 
dinary circumstances,  and  a  natural  state  of  mind, 
this  would  have  been  clear ;  but  Ambition  drew 
her  veil  over  my  eyes ;  the  dulcet  notes  of  the 
siren  luUed  my  doubts  and  scruples  to  slumber. 
I  have  my  reward;  and  I  acquiesce  in  aU  its 
hardships  uncomplainingly.    I  alone  am  to  blame. 

"  '  This  untold  misery  is  not  bodily  suffering,  nor 
is  it  physical  pain.  The  present  is  nothing,  noth- 
ing, nothing,  only  in  the  relation  that  it  bears  to 
the  past  and  the  future.  The  future  contains 
everything :  the  daily  torture  of  meeting,  m  the 
broad  sunlight  of  liberty,  the  life-long  scorn  and 
the  endless  contempt  of  mankind — and  no  strug- 
gle can  ever  redeem  me  from  the  crushing  odium 
of  its  impending  thraldom ;  for 

•  There  Is  a  secret  pronenesa  In  man  that  no  charm  can 
tame, 
0£  loudly  proclaiming  his  neighbor's  shame.' 

"  'As  to  social  restitution,  I  know  that  between 
me  and  it  there  rolls  a  fathomless  and  an  impas- 
sable gulf.  I  think  of  it  only  as  a  fated  impossi- 
bility. No  charity,  no  forbearance  that  may  exist 
for  me,  can  ever  remove  from  my  life  its  cup  of 
unmeasured  bitterness. 

"  '  My  repentance  has  not  been  fierce  and  de- 
monstrative.     Dry   sorrow   steadily    drinks    the 


MEETING  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEET  UNDER  A  CLOUD. 


261 


blood.  The  wells  of  the  heart  are  empty  and 
closed ;  each  shadowy  picture  of  the  dim  future 
pierces  deeper  the  incisions  of  its  cureless  wounds 
— a  bane  for  which  there  is  no  antidote. 

" '  I  have  been  where  the  fiercest  raging  billows 
that  ever  heaved  the  bosom  of  a  storm-rid  ocean 
were  sweeping  the  helpless,  unmanned  ship  like 
a  shrouded  ghost  through  the  dark  and  dreary 
midnight.  I  have  been  in  a  plague-stricken  city, 
where  the  epidemic  raged  like  a  merciless  demon, 
and  the  King  of  Terrors  appeared  to  reign  su- 
preme— yes,  and  I  have  been  again  and  again 
in  the  leaden  tempest  of  battle,  where  thousands 
were  dying  around  me.  Gladly,  without  a  mo- 
ment's hesitation,  would  I  brave  all  these  dangers 
over  anew  rather  than  bide  this  indelible  stain, 
this  eternal  disgrace — my  inseparable  heritage; 
a  thraldom  from  Avhich  nothing  but  death  can 
bring  relief. 

"  '  I  know  that  it  is  base  ingratitude  and  gross 
impiety ;  yet  from  the  depths  of  my  soul  do  I 
wish  that  the  ball  that  carried  away  my  arm  had 
shattered  my  body,  and  stilled  my  proud  heart  in 
death  while  it  yet  beat  buoyant  with  youth  and 
hope,  leaving  with  the  numberless  dead  a  spotless 
name;  but  I  am  'nameless  now  forevermore.' 

" '  The  days  of  the  week  fly  with  wondrous 
rapidity,  amid  the  thundering  hum  of  factory 
machinery ;  the  broad  river  and  the  surrounding 
country  plainly  visible ;  forfeited  liberty  so  near. 
At  night,  weary  nature  forces  grateful  repose. 

" '  Even  this  light  shade  of  the  picture  should 
startle  any  one,  and  deter  him  from  taking  the 
dangerous,  fatal  road  leading  to  ruin. 

" '  This,  coming  now  whence  it  comes,  may  pro- 
voke smiles  of  contempt.  Pray  do  not  despise  it, 
but  guard  well  your  careers ;  for  who  can  pene- 
trate that  obscure  veil,  and  glance  but  for  a  mo- 
ment at  Futurity's  picture — so  varied,  yet  oh, 
how  true  ? 

"  *  Every  human  being  is  in  this  drama  of  life  : 
his  stage  the  world.  Quickly  shifting  and  widely 
varying  are  the  scenes.  It  is  but  a  step  from  the 
sweetest  bUss  to  the  bitterest  woe.  Often  a  faint 
voice  of  the  slightest  warning  would  stay  the 
horrible  transition  from  Avhich  there  is  no  re- 
demption, and  for  which  no  repentance  can  ever 
atone. 


" '  Danger  may  be  far  away  in  the  dim  vista  of 
coming  years,  or  it  nuiy  be  nightly  crouching  on 
the  pillow  where  the  weary  head  slumbers  in 
innocent  repose,  whispering  into  the  ear  words 
of  infection.  Should  tangible  danger  never  come, 
the  watchful  vigils  i:)rovoked  by  its  anticipated 
approach  will  neither  mar  nor  blight  the  beauties 
and  the  joj'-s  of  life. 

'"I  recount  to  you  in  this  semblance  of  warn- 
ing, dangers  and  disasters  real.as  life,  true  as  the 
purest  gospel.  How  eagerly  would  you  pause 
with  bated  breath,  to  catch  the  faintest  eclio  of 
a  voice  from  the  grave!  This  voice  which  I 
waft  to  you  from  beyond  the  confines  of  the 
dreary,  dismal  shadow  of  prison  walls,  is  from  the 
dread  allegory  of  the  real  grave,  where  living 
death  is  no  vague  and  fancy  dream,  but  an  untold 
reality. 

•'  'Now  we  come  to  the  long  and  lonely  Sab- 
bath, filled  with  memories  and  associations  of 
yore. 

"  '  During  its  early  hours,  from  this  uninviting 
seclusion  my  thoughts  travel  back  over  the  vicis- 
situdes of  by-gone  times — twenty  years  now 
buried  with  the  dead  ages  of  the  past.  The  war 
cloud  looming  up  in  the  northern  sky ;  the  shouts 
and  tumult  of  embattled  hosts  on  blood-crimsoned 
fields;  the  death  and  the  grave  of  the  Lost  Cause; 
the  after  years  of  a  wanderer  on  the  devious, 
cheerless  road,  and  in  the  unequal  struggle  in  the 
battle  of  life — ultimate  victory  at  length  crown- 
ing years  of  toil ;  then  swift  disaster,  beneath  the 
tropical  sun  and  dream-land  skies  of  a  foreign 
land;  then  the  precipitate  velocity  down  the 
slippery  steep,  terminating  here.  Reflections  that 
conjure  up  scenes  of  inexpressible  sadness,  more 
bitter  than  sweet ;  mementoes  of  the  past;  un- 
gainly visitors  mocking  my  misery,  crowd  them- 
selves with  me  every  Sabbath  day  into  the  deep 
recess,  narrow  confines,  and  dark,  sombre  gloom 
of  this  cheerless,  solitary  cell,  whither  the  rays 
of  the  sun  never  penetrate,  and  where,  literally, 
comfort  and  hope  never  enter. 

'  'As  the  day  advances,  and  the  shadows  ci 
evening  begin  to  fall,  visions  of  your  school  and 
the  Bible-class  appear  pamfully  impressive  to  the 
imagination  at  the  hour  you  meet.  The  pleag,- 
ing,  joyous  faces;  the  harmonious  notes  of  the 


262 


IMTSTIC  KOMANCES   OF   THE  BLUE  AND  THE   GRET. 


music;  the  very  words  of  the  songs  you  used  to 
sing;  the  venerated  teacher  propounding  ques- 
tions; answers  taking  their  round;  the  •  tiny 
envelope  ghding  from  hand  to  hand — I  hear  and 
see,  or  seem  to  see  and  hear,  as  clearly,  as  dis- 
tinctl}^,  as  when  they  were  no  illusion.  But  when 
the  spell  is  broken,  it  is  a  crushing  delusion. 

"  '  Yet  still  disdaining  restraint,  the  spirit — the 
better,  the  purer,  the  nobler  impulses  of  life — will 
ever  continue  to  soar  away  on  the  pinions  of 
fancy,  swift  as  thought,  each  Sabbath  eve  to  take 
its  wonted  part  in  your  angelic  devotions;  leaving 
its  polluted  tenement  of  clay  to  the  fires  of  pur- 
gation, whither  its  soul-grieving  degradation 
caused  its  consignment. 

" '  The  hours  spent  with  you  were  among  the 
few  truly  happy  ones  that  I  have  known  in 
twenty  years ;  yet  there  are  none  that  I  now  so 
deeply  regret  having  enjoyed. 

"  '  What  changes  may  be  wrought  by  the  relent- 
less hand  of  Time  ere  my  unworthy  form  darkens 
the  door  of  your  sanctuary. 

'Some  in  the  old  cburch-yard  will  be  laid, 

Others  may  sleep  beneath  the  sea ; 

And  few  may  be  left,  of  your  good  class, 

Who  once  knew  and  respected  me.' 

"  '  The  mental  misery,  anguish  and  torture  of 
the  present,  no  tongue,  no  pen,  no  words  can 
unfold.  Add  to  this,  mere  forfeiture  of  simple 
physical  liberty,  the  appalling  disasters  it  entails ; 
the  utter  annihilation  of  all  the  tender  and  en- 
dearing ties  of  nature,  present  and  prospective ; 
the  blighting,  withering  curse  to  the  future,  in- 
evitably following,  ever  haunting,  shadowing  and 
darkening  like  a  spectral  ghost  the  pathway  of 
hfe  down  to  the  grave.  Then  come  with  me 
just  a  little  while,  in  the  hushed,  dreary,  dark- 
some, awful  silence  of  the  Sabbath-midnight 
hour,  when  nature  is  not  weary;  when  balmy 
slumbers  and  delightful  dreams  do  not  come  into 
the  little,  lonely  cell ;  when  the  elements  with- 
out are  raging ;  when  the  wild  wind  wails  and 
moans  as  if  chanting  a  requiem  for  the  lost; 
Avhen  the  memories  of  the  past,  the  companions 
of  the  day,  are  gone,  and  other  companions,  more 
terrible  and  merciless,  have  taken  their  place. 
Vision  of  going  from  here  down  to  darkness  and 
death,  alone  and   friendless,  in   the  last  sad  and 


trying  hour;  with  no  pitying  eye  to  watch  over 
the  lowly  cot;  no  gentle  hand  to  smooth  the 
rude  pillow,  and  soothe  the  aching,  feverish  brow ; 
no  sympathetic,  tender  voice  to  whisper  loving 
words  of  comfort  to  cheer  the  departing  spirit 
on  its  dread  journey  to  the  unknown  world,  and 
you  will  have  a  picture  but  faintly  outlining  the 
reality,  before  which  you  can  but  stand  aghast. 
Contemplate  it;  pause  and  consider  it;  look  upon 
it  as  you  will,  and  it  reflects,  in  some  uncertain, 
figurative  similitude,  the  suffering  of  the  lost  soul, 
doomed  without  hope  to  the  realms  of  eternal 
darkness. 

"  '  Yet  a  feAv  fleeting  months  and  the  supreme 
moment  of  my  nameless  woe  will  come,  when  I 
will  be  set  adrift  on  life's  tempestuous  sea  in  the 
frailest  craft  ever  launched  on  unfriendly  waves, 
with  no  rudder  to  steer  me ;  no  breeze  to  speed 
me  onward;  nothing  to  buoy  me  up;  nowhere 
to  go ;  no  resting  place ;  no  home  in  all  the  wide 
world — a  lone,  friendless,  blighted  man.  My  en- 
feebled frame  maimed  and  covered  with  the 
scars  of  battle ;  my  heart  mangled  by  the  shafts 
of  dire  misfortune ;  my  brow  decked  with  burn- 
ing shame,  not  unlike  the  mark  of  Cain — for  I 
have  murdered  hojje.  The  avenues  of  life  for  gain- 
ing daily  bread  closed  against  me,  I  drift  with  the 
tide  until  a  sandy  beach  rises  out  of  the  waves ;  I 
am  gazing  on  your  fair  Southland's  genial  shores. 

"'As  I  approach,  the  sweet  native  flowers 
blushingly  turn  their  pretty  httle  faces  away; 
and  the  birds  cease  to  chant  their  sweet  refrain. 

"  '  This  is  enough;  I  drift  back  with  the  tide, 
and  the  echoes  of  the  surf  on  the  beach,  gradualh' 
receding  in  the  distance,  seem  to  reverberate  the 
dirge  of  'never  more,  never  more,'  and  no  other 
shore  has  a  charm  for  me. 

"  'ISTow,  good  people,  in  the  consecrated  name 
of  your  true  Christian  charity — in  the  name  of 
that  Heaven  we  all  adore — if  there  exists  a  de- 
finable duty  for  iiie  in  this  life,  if  there  be  a 
pathway  of  duty  open  to  me,  let  me  conjure  you 
in  some  way  to  indicate  where  it  may  be  found 
and  how  I  may  know  it,  so  my  willing  footsteps 
may  seek  it,  and  that  I  may  begin  to  educate 
myself  to  be  prepared  to  pursue  it  faithfully. 

'"I  am,  if  sinful,  still  a  fellow  being.  The  purest 
Anglo-saxon   blood   courses   in    my    veins;    my 


MEETING  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY  UNDER  A  CLOUD. 


263 


heart  is  not  hopelessly  dead  and  utterly  insensi- 
ble to  every  pure  and  noble  impulse.  I  cannot 
be  worse  than  he  whom  Christ  blessed  on  the 
cross.  If  Christ  would  do  this  at  the  last  mo- 
ment, surely  you  can  condescend  to  vouclisafe 
mo  a  little  advice — whether  there  be  balm  in 
G-ilead  tor  me.  I  crave  no  sympathy,  no  blessing 
other  than  that  asked  above. 

"  '  I  have  no  prospects  of  finding  an  early  grave, 
and  I  will  in  no  way  hasten  it,  unless  the  mere 
pressure  of  mental  distress  causes  vitahty  to  ebb 
out.  And  never  again  will  I,  under  any  state  of 
circumstances,  swerve  from  the  path  of  rectitude 
and  duty,  should  I  ever  find  it  more. 

'"A  little  reflection,  a  mere  passing  thought, 
suffices  to  satisfy  the  most  sensitive,  however 
reluctantly  the  truth  is  admitted,  that  we  are 
all  tending  toward,  and  that,  ere  many  years  more 
have  been  marked  by  the  dial  of  Time,  we  will 
have  passed  to  one  common  level — the  grave; 
where  weal  and  woe,  pleasure  and  pain,  joy  and 
sorrow,  will  blend  in  silent  harmony,  undisturbed 
by  disdainful  smiles. 

" '  I  have  recalled  in  vain  all  I  ever  heard  or 
read  on  this  subject,  to  find  something  more  truly 
appropriate  than  the  lings : 

'  Can  storied  urn  or  animated  bust. 

Back  to  its  mansion  call  the  fleeting  breath? 
Can  Honor's  voice  provoke  the  silent  dust. 

Or  Flattery  soothe  the  dull,  cold  ear  of  death? 

*  *  *  *  *  *  * 

The  boast  of  heraldry,  the  pomp  of  power. 
All  that  beauty,  all  that  wealth  e'er  gave, 

Await  alike  the  inevitable  hour — 
The  paths  of  glory  lead  but  to  the  grave.' 

"'In  bidding  you  a  long  and,  to  me,  painful 
farewell,  I  know  nothing  that  is  more  consonant 
with  the  anguish  of  the  cureless  wounds  in  my 
wretched  heart  than  that  which  flowed  from 
the  agonized  soul  of  the  primitive  red  man,  long, 
ago,  when  he  exclaimed  : 

'  Oft  shall  glowing  hope  expire. 
Oft  shall  wearied  love  retire. 
Oft  shall  death  and  sorrow  reign. 
Ere  we  all  shall  meet  again. 
When  the  dreams  of  life  are  fled, 
When  its  wasted  lamps  are  dead. 
When  In  cold  oblivion's  shade. 
Beauty,  fame,  and  wealth  are  laid, 
Where  immortal  spirits  reign, 
There  may  we  all  meet  again.' 

"  '  May  your  good  guardian  angels  ever  direct 


your  steps  throughout  hfe's  treacherous  journey, 
and  shield  you  from  the  many  dangers  lurking 
beside  it,  and  from  all  harm. 

'  Adieu !     Once  again,  farewell! 

"  '  Your  wretched  example, 

" '  Garland  Cloud.' 

"  Ah,  G-arland,  this  is  truly  the  outpourings  of 
a  heart  full  of  wretchedness.  What  a  sad  re- 
flection on  human  nature  and  its  proneness  to 
depravity,  that  men  capable  of  cherishing  such 
fine  sentiments  as  are  embodied  in  this  letter, 
will  take  chances  that  will  render  them  liable  to 
become  subject  to  such  disastrous  and  ruinous 
consequences  as  have  overtaken  and  crushed 
you." 

Cloud  :  "  Of  all  that  is  incomprehensible  in  this 
world,  that  is  the  most  puzzling  to  explain  or 
understand.  In  my  own  case,  I  cannot  try  to 
define  why  it  was  thus  with  me ;  yet  mysterious 
as  it  is  to  myself,  still  it  is  none  the  less  sadly 
true." 

Lawrence  :  "  Now,  G-arland,  my  time  with 
you  is  rapidly  drawing  to  a  close.  Let  us  talk 
over  the  other  features  of  your  personal  plans,  as 
you  intimated  having  them  outlined,  in  order 
that  I  may  see  how  far  they  may  be  applied  to 
my  own  case." 

Cloud:  "  Well,  Lawrence,  partly  they  will  ap- 
ply to  your  case,  but  largely  they  cannot,  owing 
to  the  wide  difference  that  must  obtain  between 
the  condition  in  our  after  situations  and  relations 
in  life — assuming  that  you  will  be  under  the  pro- 
tecting influence  of  powerful  frjends. 

"  The  first  step,  the  base  of  the  foundation  of 
all  my  future  plans,  no  matter  how  much  their 
general  features  of  construction  ma;y  be  effected 
by  the  influence  of  any  outside  order  of  circum- 
stances that  transpire,  is  to  complete  the  mastery 
of  the  French,  the  German,  the  Spanish,  and  the 
Itahan  languages  while  here,  under  a  thoroughly 
theoretical  and  practical  system,  some  of  which 
I  am  already  well  advanced  in,  as  to'  the  primary 
principles  of  their  radical  construction.  This 
quahfication,  added  to  my  commercial  experience 
and  most  consummate  knowledge  of  human 
nature,  will  guarantee  me  employment  as  a  com- 
mission salesman,  to  travel  in  the  interest  of  the 


264 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


first  houses  of  the  land,  on  the  express  condition 
of  '  i\"o  results,  no 'pay,'  and  of  States  desirous  of 
obtaining  emigration  in  and  fr,om  those  islands, 
provinces  and  countries  where  these  tongues  are 
spoken. 

"  Thus  I  expect  to  earn  money  to  pay  any  just 
commercial  claims  against  me,  and  to  reinstate 
myself  in  whatever  sphere  from  which  there  is 
a  feasible  prospect  of  my  being  able  the  most 
advantageously  to  benefit  the  human  race.  Thus 
I  hope  to  atone,  against  the  reserved  wrath  of 
the  hereafter,  for  the  transgressions  of  my 
erratic  life — the  only  evidence  of  reformation, 
the  only  voucher  for  repentance,  the  only  offer- 
ing for  atonement,  in  which  I  have  one  particle 
of  faith.  Being  sorry  for  the  past,  merely  in 
consequence  of  the  penalties  it  entails,  without 
a  thorough  revolution  in  the  natural  bent  of 
the  inclinations,  and  the  established  current 
of  the  lives  of  men  Avho  have  gone  astray, 
the  deep  and  solid  foundations  of  which  changes 
must  be  firmly  laid  while  they  are  writh- 
ing under  the  scourging  lash  of  their  stern 
and  unpitying  Retribution,  upon  Avhich  the 
structure  of  their  after  lives  must  be  erected 
with  undeviating  correctness  and  precise  accu- 
racy, is  of  no  more  value,  socially  or  morally, 
than  the  cries  of  a  miserable  hound  from  the 
blows  received  for  trespassing  on  the  culinary 
premises  of  his  master,  which  he  will  repeat 
again  the  first  opportunity. 

"  While  I  am  engaged  in  the  occupations  of 
my  after  life,  I  am  resolved  to  write  some  lines 
for  the  press,  to  say  a  word  in  private,  and  to 
deliver  a  free  public  lecture  as  often  as  it  is 
practicable  and  consistent  with  the  nature  of  the 
circumstances  under  which  I  may  be  placed  with 
reference  to  my  travels  and  labors,  for  the  ex- 
press purpose  of  turning  men  from  paths  that 
lead  to  this  or  a  similar  hell  on  earth. 

"  And  in  addition  to  this,  I  am  fully  deter- 
mined, after  harvest  and  crop  laying-by  time  of 
each  year,  to  devote  two  months  of  my  lonely 
life  in  the  rural  districts  of  some  section  of  coun- 
try to  teaching  ten-day  free  schools,  in  order 
there,  in  each  community,  to  lay  the  foundation 
of  a  simple  system  of  self-education,  such  as  I 
have  learned  in  the  hard  school  of  experience  is 


both  efficacious  and  practical,  and  which  will  en- 
able any  clod-hopper,  at  a  cost  of  two  dollars  and 
without  the  loss  of  a  single  hour  from  his  labor, 
to  acquire  a  fair  average  business  education. 
The  two  dollars  will  supply  the  books  that  are 
absolutely  indispensable. 

"  Should  I  be  able  to  accomplish  these  things, 
I  am  persuaded  that  the  inexorable  voice  of  stern 
duty  could  demand  no  more  of  me  in  this  dreary 
life.  All  the  latter  part  you  can  easily  reduce  to 
practice." 

Lawrence  :  "  Yes,  I  can,  and  I  will,  to  the  ex- 
tent of  m.y  ability." 

"  Now,  Garland,  my  time  with  you  is  up.  God 
knows  whether  we  shall  be  able  to  speak  to  each 
other  again  or  not  before  my  term  expires,  per- 
haps never, 

"Let  us,  therefore,  as  a  parting  salutation,  here 
amid  the  thickening  gloom  of  this  dreary  cell, 
solemnly  vow,  and  call  upon  these  grim  and  som- 
bre walls  to  witness,  that  to  the  ends  of  our  lives 
we  will  be  true  and  faithful  to  our  mutual  pledges 
made  to-day.     Give  me  your  hand." 

Cloud:  " With  all  my  heart.  May  health  and 
peace  be  yours." 

Lawrence  :  "  God  bless  you.  Garland,  and  de- 
liver you  from  the  spectral  shadow  that  haunts 
your  life." 

Thus  met  and  parted  these  two  strangely-fated 
characters,  as  widely  different  from  each  other  as 
the  icy  pole  is  separated  from  the  torrid  clime. 
Innocent  Pleasington  is,  however,  a  tliinker  much 
of  the  same  order  as  sinful  Cloud,  whose  logical 
theories  have  always  been  philosophicall}^  sound; 
while  the  current  of  his  practice  has  been  per- 
petually muddy  with  error  and  crime. 

To  Garland  Cloud  and  Lawrence  Pleasington 
are  we  indebted  for  the  ground-work  of  most  of 
the  chapters  in  this  volume — and  especially  to 
the  interview  which  we  have  just  recorded — 
because  without  concert  of  action  on  their  part, 
it  would  have  been  a  moral  impossibility  to  get 
at  the  essential  facts  absolutely  indispensable  to 
our  purpose — facts  which  one  of  them  alone  never 
could  have  supplied.  But  one  was  always  able 
to  furnish  the  connecting  links  Avhich  were  want- 
ing on  the  part  of  the  other. 

This  interview  occurred  sufficiently  long  ago  to 


MEETING  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY  UNDER  A  CLOUD. 


265 


have  been  placed  as  the  introductory  chapter; 
but  we  preferred  to  keep  it  in  the  back-ground,  to 
take  its  place  in  the  regular  order  of  events,  just 
as  they  transpired,  believing  that  it  was  a  matter 
of  little  or  no  consequence  Avhen  we  explained 
exactly  how  we  came  in  possession  of  the  infor- 
mation thus  acquired. 

As  to  the  copies  of  letters  introduced,  they  are 
as  authentically  genuine  as  the  same  number  of 
words  copied  from  the  pages  of  the  Bible  would 
be,  even  to  the  name  of  the  minister  and  the 
Sabbath-school.  The  letter  written  by  Cloud  from 
the  county  prison  would  have  appeared,  but  we 
failed  to  procure  a  copy  of  it. 

The  letter  to  the  Sabbath-school  was  shoM^n 
by  the  chaplain,  as  it  was  going  through  his  de- 
partment's routine  for  the  mail,  to  a  prominent 
gentleman,  as  a  marvel  of  a  pen-picture  of  a  prison 
life  to  a  sensitively  intelligent  mind.  This  gentle- 
man had  a  copy  made  of  the  letter.  Months  after 
he  informed  Cloud  that  he  had  this  copy,  which 
he  had  read  again  and  again  to  crowcTs  of  peo- 
ple, upon  whose  minds  it  had  produced  a  grave 
impression.  He  requested  Cloud  to  take  the  let- 
ter and  see  whether  or  not  the  copy  was  correct. 
It  was  in  this  way  that  we  obtained  our  copy ; 
Cloud  had  not"  retained  a  copy  of  a  single  sentence 
of  the  original.  Since  that  time,  those  of  his  let- 
ters that  appear  were  copied  for  us  from  the 
originals  before  they  were  sent  to  the  chaplain  to 
mail.  All  letters  from  outside  parties  have  been, 
and  will  be,  copied  from  the  originals  directly  into 
our  pages. 

We  produce  the  letters  because  they  reflect  in 
as  clear  and  forcible  a  light  the  features  of  our 
purpose  to  which  they  refer,  as  anything  that  we 
could  possibly  write  might  approximately  attain 
the  same  result ;  and  because  we  are  not  so  ego- 
tistical as  to  flatter  ourselves  that  we  could  so 
touchingly  appeal  to  the  hearts  of  mankind, while 
addressing  all  men  of  intelligence,  as  those  writ- 
ers have  appealed  when  pouring  out  their  sad 
hearts'  keenly  felt  emotion  to  their  personal 
friends — or  to  those  whom  they  dreamed  were 
friends. 


CHAPTER  LXIX. 

UNMASKED    AND    STANDING    IN    NUDE    DEFORMITY. 

"  What  stings 
Are  theirs  I     One  breast  laid  cpeu  was  a  school 
Which  would  un  teach  mankind  the  lust  to  shine  or 
rule."  — Bykon. 

About  two  weeks  after  the  interview  between 
Cloud  and  Pleasington,  the  former  enters  his  cell 
at  night,  weary  from  standing  all  day  in  the  shop, 
and  feeling  unusually  depressed  and  despondent. 
For  a  week  past  his  dreams  have  been  torturingly 
unpleasant,  causing  sleep  to  be  a  horrible  night- 
mare, from  which  he  often  has  awoke  with  beaded 
drops  of  cold  perspiration  standing  upon  his  brow. 
Throughout  the  day  his  mind  has  darkly  brooded 
over  these  dreary  visions,  and  lapsed  into  gloomy 
foreboding?  that  they  were  premonitory  omens 
of  some  great  and  impending  calamity  about  to 
be  visited  upon  his  father's  innocent  family  as  a 
direct  result  of  his  own  misdeeds  and  crimes.  Ah, 
but  how  little  he  dreamed  of  its  true  nature  ! 

On  this  particular  evening,  immediately  after 
his  lamp  is  lighted — the  next  thing  in  order  after 
closing  the  iron  door— a  letter  is  passed  in  to  him 
through  the  grating.  It  is  in  the  well-kpown 
•characters  of  his  brother,  a  fair  and  promising 
young  man,  whose  life  is  now  marred  and  his 
prospects  blighted  by  the  wreck  and-  ruin  caused 
by  the  catastrophe  which  terminated  the  erring 
brother's  career  and  consigned  him  to  his  present 
doom.  Some  ten  days  previously  he  had  received 
a  letter  from  this  same  brother  that  reproached 
him  bitterly ;  and  he  involuntarily  shudders  as  Jie 
draws  this  latter  letter  from  its  covering  prepara- 
tory to  reading  it.  A  death-warrant  would  be 
preferable.     It  runs : 

"City  by  the  Sea,  October,  1880. 
"  My  Lost  Brother : 

"It  becomes  my  painful  duty  to  inform  you 
that  some  startling  developments,  referring  to 
yourself,  have  been  published  here  this  morning, 
that  rendered  me  speechless  with  amazement,  and 
stupefied  me  with  shocking  horror.  They  brand 
the  vague  intimations  which  you  have  made  as  to 
the  past  seven  of  your  ten  years  of  mysterious 


266 


MYSTIC  KOMANCES   OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE   GREY. 


and  silent  wanderings — silent,  at  least,  to  us — as 
miserable  fabrications.  More  than  this,  they 
locate  you  definitely  and  unquestionably  for  every 
day  of  that  period  in  Louisiana  and  the  '  Future 
City,'  where  you  were  known  as  Nube  Garland, 
and  lived  a  married  life  with  a  most  estimable 
lady,  tlie  daughter  of  a  cotton  planter,  Eldred 
Donne.  Furthermore,  they  demon.strate  that  the 
magnitude  of  your  transactions  had  startled  tlie 
commercial  community,  and  that  the  unscrupulous 
audacity  of  your  financiering  had  made  the  bank- 
ing interest  tremble  to  its  foundation  with  alarm 
in  the  '  Future  City.' 

"  Ahl  my  wayward  brother,  the  deep  mystery 
of  your  disconsolate  and  miserable  life  is  now  un- 
folded. I  can  now  understand  why  it  was  not 
possible  for  you  ever  to  be  happy  or  cheerful ; 
and  why  that  fife  had  no  charms  for  you. 

"Is  it  possible  that  you  again  attempted  to 
commit  suicide  at  the  'Future  Citj','  and  fled  be- 
cause you  failed  ?  It  must  be  true.  This  accounts 
for  the  pitiable  phght  you  were  in  wlien  you 
reached  home. 

"  In  your  first  flight  you  had  no  cause  to  change 
your  name ;  a  name  of  which  you  are  the  first  one 
ever  to  be  ashamed,  and  a  name  tliat  you  are  the 
first*  one  to  dishonor.  Why  merely  transpose 
your  name  by  placing  your  true  Christian  as  your 
surname,  and  using  a  word  in  a  strange  language, 
of  the  same  meaning  as  your  true  surname,  for 
your  Christian  name  ?  Why  not  call  yourself  Gar- 
land Cloud,  just  as  well  as  Cloud  Garland  ?  Of  all 
the  strange  people  in  this  world  you  are  one  of 
the  strangest! 

''That  you  would  change  your  name  and  con- 
tinue to  do  business  with  the  same  cities,  and  the 
same  houses  even,  and  to  visit  those  cities  where 
you  were  known  by  hundreds  of  people  under 
your  true  name;  that  you  would  "locate  in  the 
'Future  City,'  where  there  lived  those  who  knew 
you  well;  and  that  you  should  establish  your- 
self here  and  open  up  direct  relations  with  houses 
in  that  city  with  which  you  had  transactions 
under  yo'ur  assumed  name,  appears  too  incredible 
to  believe.  Yet,  as  I  understand  it,  such  are  the  facts. 

"  You  know  what  you  have  done.  I  do  not 
know  all — and  regret  that  I  have  life  in  me  now 
and  know  so  much. 


"As  I  understand  it,  a  merchant  of  the  '  Future 
City,'  who  had  been  a  warm  friend  to,  and  taken 
a  deep  interest  in  you,  read*  an  account  of  your 
shame  in  a  paper  where  your  trouble  occurred, 
and  liis  attention  was  attracted  by  the  fact  that 
your  Christian  name  was  the  same  as  the  sur- 
name of  the  party  whom  he  at  once  made  up  his 
mind  that  you  must  be ;  and  he  wrote  to  Louisiana 
for  the  photograph  of  that  man  to  be  sent  to  the 
chief  of  police  of  this  city. 

"Accordingly,  Mrs.  Manonia  Garland  sent  the 

photograph.     Capt.  C showed  it  to  me  and 

asked  me  if  I  was  able  to  place  it.  It  did  not 
look  like  you  did  since  I  can  remember  you; 
but  it  was  the  same  as  one  you  gave  sissie,  and 
by  the  same  artist  in  New  Orleans ;  so  I  at  once 
told  him  it  was  my  brother.  The  captain  did 
not  intimate  the  truth  to  me  then. 

"The  publication  was  a  letter  from  the 'Fu- 
ture City'  merchant,  and  another  from  Eldred 
Donne,  both  addressed  to  the  mayor  of  this  city, 
and  evidently  not  intended  for  the  Press;  yet 
the  mayor  gave  them  to  the  papers. 

"This  completes  my  commercial  damnation. 
Henceforth  I  shall  devote  my  life  to  the  profes- 
sion of  civil  engineering,  in  building  railroads 
in  miasmatic  swamps  where  life  is  short.  But 
for  the  home  folks,  who  ra-e  iio^\-  almost  delirious 
with  trouble,  I  would  not  live  until  morning. 

"Your  letter,  covering  a  note  to  Rev.  W.  H. 
D ,  and  a  lengthy  address  to  the  Sabbath- 
school,  has  been  received.  Your  request  to 
deliver  the  same  will  not  be  complied  with.  Thej' 
will  never  be  delivered. 

"I  am  writing  this  letter  down  tOAvn  without 
the  knowledge  and  contrary  to  the  wish  of  the 
family. 

"Your  unhapp}^  brother, 

"J .'• 

The  letter  drops  from  Cloud's  hand ;  and  he 
stands  as  if  transfixed  to  the  spot — an  image  as 
grim  and  motionless  as  the  encircling  walls  of 
granite  that  environ  him  so  closely.  There  is 
no  perspiration  standing  on  the  swarthy  fore- 
head; no  labored  breathing;  no  change  in  the 
pale  and  haggard  features  which  naturally  are 
ghastly  as  a  spectre,  in  the  ghostly  glimmer  of 
the   flickering  lamplight.     What  is  the  matter? 


UNMASKED  AND  STANDING  IN  NUDE  DEFORMITY. 


267 


Is  ho  paralyzed  with  terror  and  dumb  with 
amazement?  Ah,  no!  This  is  foreign  to  that 
■  neutrahty  of  nature  that  could  rally  such  forces 
of  self-control,  and  command  such  masterful  and 
seemingly  indifferent  composure  in  the  supreme 
moment  of  a  great  crisis. 

He  had  arrived  at  that  point  on  the  stage  of 
his  checkered  career  where  no  wonder  aAvaited 
him,  and  where,  for  himself  alone,  he  recked 
not  what  might  befall  him. 

He  is  absorbed  in  rapidly  active  thought.  In 
a  moment  he  slowly  raises  his  bowed  head,  and 
pre:;sing  his  hand  on  his  forehead,  soliloquizes : 

"Garland  Cloud  —  Nube  Garland  —  hunted 
down,  amalgamated,  re-united!  Falsehood  and 
truth — Oh  Truth,  thy  victorious  sceptre  prevails 
at  last;  may  it  forever  reign !  Blessed  Truth, 
thou  has  rent  in  twain  and  torn  in  tattered 
shreds  from  my  life  its  ingloriously  ignominious 
and  damnably  enslaving  mask !  Unmasked ! 
Unmasked !     Unmasked ! 

"  Free  once  more  from  the  thraldom  of  the 
demon's  curse. — But  before  the  world  I  stand  in 
the  nude  deformity  of  my  horrible  infamy  and 
unutterable  shame. 

"  What  of  it  ?  Where  stood  I  before  ?  Avaunt ! 
execrable  fiend!  1  will  no  more  with  thy  hell- 
ish sway.  Speak  'not,  whisper  not,  approach 
not  my  grated  door !  Away  with  thy  damnable 
hope-crushing,  life-bhghting  mask !  I  have 
worn  it  long,  but  with  rebellious  reluctance 
that  has  taxed  thy  wily  craftiness  to  its  ut- 
most cunning  to  retain  it  upon  me.  One 
stroke  of  moral  courage,  to  assist  me  at  any 
moment  and  in  open  defiance,  I  was  free- 
Truth  has  kindly  shattered  thy  fetters  and 
broken  thy  spell.  I  am  thy  slave  no  more.  On 
the  swift  wings  of  freedom's  wind  my  song  of 
liberty  shall  go.  And  my  curse  be  upon  thy 
curse.  In  the  name  of  truth,  the  odious  loath- 
someness of  thy  cruel  service,  and  the  shocking 
story  of  its  bitter  penalties  will  I  proclaim.  In 
thine  own  sub-realm,  one  victim  thou  hast  lost. 
From  thine  own  relay-house  thy  late  but  now 
emancipated  slave  will  wage  war — uncompromis- 
ing, relentless  war — upon  thee  and  thy  detestable 
cause  ;  fearlessly  hurling  defiance  in  thy  teeth 
and  those  of  thy  surrounding  minions.     I  know 


thee  and  thine  from  the  reality  of  terrible  ex- 
l)erience.     I  am  one  of  them  no  more. 

"Oh  ye  dehvering  powers  of  truth,  defend 
me!  Keep  me  free  and  far  from  the  mask  and 
the  terrors  of  a  masked  life!  Eather  give  me 
forever  the  dismal  horrors  of  a  dungeon's  gloom, 
free  from  those  haunting  spectres  that  are  -ever 
hovering  around  the  mask.  Let  me  now  remain 
as  I  am  known :  my  veritable  self,  with  aU  my 
shame  and  degradation  proclaimed  to  the  world. 
Anything,  everything,  but  the  mask  again  that 
will  transform  a  palace  into  an  unmitigated  hell. 
And  oh!  what  then  can  I  call  it — what  name 
must  it  merit,  in  a  lone  dungeon's  life  ?  Words 
fail,  language  recoils  from  the  task. 

"Alasfor  those  hearts  that  have  bled  and  those 
lives  that  are  blighted  from  the  contagious 
destruction  wrongly  alone  by  my  false  life !  But 
the  evil  has  been  done — past  cure,  past  redemp- 
tion. Eegrets  are  unavailing ;  and  brooding  over 
what  might  have  been  can  afford  me  no  rehef. 
So  let  me  turn  my  thoughts  to,  and  train  my 
mind  for,  works  of  usefulness." 

For  many  days  after  this  experience.  Garland 
Cloud  is  notably  a  changed  man.  He  apjjears 
exhausted,  as  a  traveler  after  a  long  and  toil- 
some journey  under  a  heavy  burden;  but,  hke 
this  man,  after  he  has  arrived  at  his  destination, 
laid  aside  his  burden,  he  rests  calmly,  with  a 
quiet  and  placid  mind.  Cloud  seems  to  be  easier, 
reposing  visibly  conscious  that  he  is  greatly  re- 
lieved, and  feeling,  no  doubt,  that  a  second  great 
crisis  in  his  life  has  arrived  and  is  pa.ssed. 

In  this  relation,  in  a  point  of  mortal  vicAv  per- 
taining to  this  life  only,  as  compared  with  the 
immortal  vision  of  spiritual  existence,  we  can  but 
think  of  Bunyan's  Christian,  as  we  contemplate 
him  and  his  condition  after  the  burden  has  been 
severed  and  rolled  from  his  shoulders,  while  we 
are  considering  Cloud  in  his  emancipated  state. 
Not  going  beyond  this  hfe,  leaving  the  spiritual 
consequences  entirely  out  of  the  question,  and  the 
l:)urden  of  this  man's  curse  was  as  grievous  and 
terrilile  as  that  of  Bunyan's  character,  and  the 
import  of  his  delivery  from  its  thraldom  of 
slavery  no  less  a  lesson  of  grave  value  to  man- 
kind. 

Of  all  things  in  this  world,  from  the   secret 


268 


3IYSTIG  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


longings  of  his  heart,  there  is  no  douljt  but  Cloud 
most  desired  to  be  free  from  the  dark  terrors  of 
his  masked  hfe,  which  he  had  long  recognized  as 
a  pursuing  curse  that  blighted  all  that  he  at- 
tempted, and  from  "which  he  could  neither  escape 
nor  hide  awaj^;  and  that  with  the  influence  of 
its  power,  he  was  unable  to  cope.  Yet  he  lacked 
the  moral  courage  to  tear  the  mask  away  with 
his  own  hand  and  say  to  the  world,  ^^ There  is 
what  I  have  seemed  to  be;  here  is  what  I  have 
been  and  what  I  now  am."  This  courage  he 
never  could  have  found,  but  would  have  con- 
tinued drifting  on  from  bad  to  Avorse  until  he 
drifted  into  the  grave. 

Tearing  away  the  mask  from  the  lives  of  men  is 
as  essentially  necessary  for  their  peace  of  mind  in 
this  world,  and  their  deliverance  from  a  haunting 
terror  that  is  truly  maddening — as  important  to 
an  earthly  existence  that  is  nSi  almost  utterly  in- 
tolerable, as  the  confessional,  repentance  and  the 
cross  are  the  only  means  by  which  a  sinner  may 
attain  theological  salvation.  For  all  these  reasons, 
then.  Cloud  received  the  greatest  earthly  blessing 
that  could  possibly  have  been  bestowed  upon 
him,  and  the  only  one  that  he  had  received  for 
more  than  twenty  years. 

Now  he  may  be  true.  What  he  undertakes, 
henceforth,  provided  he  thus  wills  it,  can  be  true, 
and  real,  and  good ;  while,  before  the  mask  was 
torn  from  him  and  his  true  character  revealed  to 
the  world,  it  was  morally  impossible  for  any  per- 
manent good  to  be  associated  with  his  life,  which 
was  but  an  unmitigated  lie. 

When  he  returned  to  his  true  name,  his  kin- 
dred and  his  native  land,  it  was  with  a  deeply- 
fixed  determination  to  live  true  and  good.  So 
far  as  all  the  days  of  his  past  life,  passed  under 
his  true  name,  were  concerned,  this  might  then 
have  been  possible,  as  the  cause  which  first  in- 
duced him  to  assuma  the  mask  was  known. 

Ah !  but  there  was  the  mysterious,  missing  link 
of  the  unexplained  and  untold  years  of  the  mad 
and  fierce  career  of  Nube  Garland  still  to  pursue 
him  with  the  pangs  of  undying  remorse.  The 
Avenger,  scourge  of  retribution  in  hand,  yet  held 
this  meed  of  penalty  in  reserve  for  infliction, 
from  which,  for  Garhmd  Cloud,  there  was  no 
escape. 


For  nearly  three  years  his  life,  as  to  anything 
oven  bordering  on  crime,  was  correct;  and  he 
struggled  as  man  rarely  ever  struggles,  but  in 
A  aiu.  Destiny  had  prepared  a  doom  and  led  him 
vn  blindl}'  to  meet  and  fulfill  it.  Obedience  to 
tliis  stern  decree  will  continue  to  demand  and  re- 
quire much  of  him  throughout  the  remainder  of 
his  unworthy  life. 

For  fifteen  3'ears  he  had  incessantly  acted  a  lie; 
for  fifteen  years  he  had  been  driven  thereby, 
deeper  and  deeper  into  devious  paths  of  black 
dishonor  and  infamous  crime. 

We  observe  that,  although  Cloud  otherwise 
persuaded  himself,  being  Ijiought  to  grief  and 
public  shame  under  his  true  name  served  not  to 
sever  him  from  his  chain  of  enslaving  error. 
Still  he  struggled  to  conceal  the  relation  of  his 
identity  with  Nube  Garland. 

It  appears,  with  this  exception,  that  he  at  once 
returned  to  true  princijiles  and  good  resolutions. 

He  entered  upon  the  payment  of  his  doom 
with  a  well-defined  determination  to  atone  to 
society  and  the  world  with  more  elaborate  offer- 
ings than  the  mere  legal  forfeitures,  and  these 
atonements  he  voluntarily  rendered.  But  what 
could  this  ever  avail  him  behind  the  horrible  pall 
of  darkening  deception  ? 

We  have  witnessed  his  vain  strug^es  Avith  a 
trifling  cause  of  deception  that  ultimately  severed 
him  from  his  adored  fatality,  Carrie  PTarman. 
Some  years  later  we  beheld  him  mei^ging  upon  the 
stage,  at  the  Donne  homestead,  under  the  decep- 
tive guise  of  Nube  Garland.  Now  not  only  the 
ghost  of  the  old  deception,  but  also  the  spectre  of  a 
false  name  and  the  haunting  shadows  of  suicide — 
impressions  left  on  the  minds  of  his  friends  as  a 
withering  blight  to  the  fondest  hopes  of  Carrie 
Harman — augmented  his  curse,  the  ignoble  herit- 
age of  a  false  and  treacherous  life.  We  have  seen 
his  struggles,  with  the  halloAved  support  of  !Mano- 
nia's  pure  and  divine  influence  to  strengthen  and 
encourage  his  efforts,  and  his  failures  and  his 
despair. 

Again  we  saAV  him  return  to  his  true  name 
under  the  fixed  determination  to  live  true  and 
honorable.  But  now  was  added  to  his  curse  the 
Avrongs  of  Manonia.  We  have  seen  him  over- 
taken and  overwhelmed  by  the  thraldom  of  his 


UNMASKED  AND  STANDING  IN  NUDE  DEFOEMITY. 


269 


accumulated  sins.  Tlis  letter  to  the  minister  was 
a  grand  effort,  had  it  told  all  the  story.  Grander 
still  Avas  that  of  the  letter  to  the  Sabbath-school 
and  his  plans  outlined  to  Lawrence  Pleasington. 
But  the  curse  of  damnable  deception  and  diaboli- 
cal concealment  shrouds  all  their  charming  beau- 
ties and  admirable  brilliancy  in  the  sombre  gloom 
of  the  midnight  of  despair.  He  was  farther  from 
the  pathway  of  right  and  truth,  deeper  engulfed 
in  the  whirlpool  of  destruction,  than  ever  before 
in  his  erratic  and  ill-breeding  life. 

What  a  wonderful  and  startling  career!  Thus 
to  pass  from  one  character  to  another  under  an 
assumed  name,  and  then  again  to  resume  the 
first ;  coming  in  direct  contact  with  people  who 
knew  him  under  his  true  colors  while  sailing 
under  false  ones.  Then,  after  he  was  once  again 
Garland  Cloud,  coming  repeatedly  in  contact,  and 
actually  boldly  doing  business  with  people  Avho 
knew  him  once  under  his  false  colors  as  NuIjc 
Garland. 

Thus  he  lived  for  thirteen  3^ears  without  ever 
being  detected,  and  but  twice  imperfectly  and 
only  momentarily  recognized.  The  first  time 
Avas  on  board  a  palace-car,  by  friends  of  his  early 
years.  But  he  quickly  and  successfully  misled 
them  by  assuming  the  role  of  a  Frenchman.  The 
second  time  was  in  the  "  City  by  the  Sea,"  by  the 
"  Future  City  "  merchant,  recorded  in  the  chapter 
"Where  the  palmetto  buds  and  the  magnolia 
blooms."  This  merchant  know  Nube  Garland  as 
well  as  he  knew  any  man  on  the  Cotton  Exchange. 
But  Cloud  had  become  so  much  emaciated  and  care- 
worn that  the  merchant  was  easily  satisfied  that  he 
was  mistaken,  when  first  impressed  with  the  idea 
that  he  had  recognized  Nube  Garland. 

While  in  the  city  where  he  consummated  his 
final  and  fatal  transaction.  Cloud  daily  met  and 
recognized  men  from  the  ''Future  City,"  and  re- 
peatedly passed  them  indifferently,  without  re- 
ceiving as  much  as  a  suspicious  glance  from  any 
one  of  them. 

Then,  after  he  had  been  consigned  to  the  deep, 
remote  seclusion  of  confinement  for  nearly  three 
months,  more  than  a  thousand  miles  away  from 
the  scenes  in  wdiich  he  had  been  an  actor  under  an 
assumed  name,  a  brief  newspaper  paragraph  led  to 
his  identification  and  the  open  exposure  which 


unmasked  him.  Thus  he  was  left  standing  be- 
fore the  contemptuous  gaze  of  the  world,  a  nude 
reality.  In  this  character  he  received  a  penalty 
which  he  had  long  anticipated,  and  which  he  had 
ever  known  that  he  justly  merited. 

Such  were  his  crimes,  such  were  his  sufferings, 
and  such  was  his  retribution. 

For  his  return  to  the  paths  of  honor  and  duty 
he  is  now  entitled  to  no  degree  of  credit.  He 
was  driven  back;  voluntarily,  he  never  would 
have  returned. 


CHAPTER  LXX. 

THE     NOBLK      PHILANTHROPIST. 

"The  great  men  may  be  those  whose  name 
Is  written  high  for  worldly  eyes : 
The  greatest  men  are  those  whose  fame 

Reach  up  and  live  beyond  the  skies— 
Whose  lives  live  out  the  grand  old  plan : 
God's  noblest  work,  a  noble  man." 

— M.  A.  Billings. 

About  the  year  1840,  in  the  great  shadows  of 
the  White  Mountains,  there  was  a  lad  at  a  coun- 
try boarding-school.  At  the  same  small  village 
where  this  school  was  situated,  there  were  two 
or  three  stores.  Near  the  same  place  there  was 
a  foundry.  For  the  work  performed  in  this  es- 
tablishment the  men  employed  received  high 
wages.  With  their  pockets  and  hands  full  of 
money  they  went  to  the  village  to  trade  in  the 
stores,  where  our  young  student  observed  them, 
their  prodigal  expenditures,  and  learned  some- 
thing of  the  nature  of  their  trade.  Fascinated 
with  a  calling  that  yielded  money  in  suth  lavish 
l^rofusion,  he  determined  to  abandon  his  studies 
and  enter  the  foundry  as  an  apprentice,  which  he 
promptly  did. 

In  due  time  he  mastered  the  trade,  saved  some 
money,  and  set  out  with  the  "  Star  of  Empire  "  on 
its  "Westward  way." 

After  traveling  a  considerable  distance  by  stage, 
he  arrived  on  the  banks  of  a  majestic  river,  where 
he  designed  to  embark,  and  where  there  was  an 
extensive  stove  factory.  While  waiting  for  the 
boat  he  learned  that  there  was  a  great  demand 
for  moulders,  at  high  wages. 


270 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


Quickly  he  observed  that  he  was  a  sui)erior 
moulder  to  any  one  engaged  in  the  foundry. 

These  facts  decided  him  to  remain. 

Thus  prompted  he  set  out  to  seek  a  boarding- 
house.  On  his  way  to  accomplish  this  preliminary 
negotiation  to  a  residence  in  a  strange  city,  he 
crossed  over  a  high  hill,  whence  he  looked  down 
upon  the  works  of  his  new  employers. 

From  this  elevation  it  was  easy  for  a  young 
mind,  buoyant  with  hope  and  sanguine  with  a 
laudable  ambition,  to  ascend  yet  higher ;  to  mount 
in  imagination  to  the  lofty  pinnacle  of  the  temple 
of  Fame.  He  dreamed  wildly,  as  it  would  seem  to 
a  casual,  dispassionate  observer ;  yes,  he  dreamed, 
and  not  only  dreamed,  but  he  resolved  to  do  some- 
thing. With  his  noble,  guileless,  pure  young  heart 
on  glowing  fire,  and  his  soul  tlorillingwith  rapturous 
ecstacies  of  brilliant  anticipations  for  the  vague 
prospects  concealed  behind  the  mysterious  veil 
of  the  future,  he  reared  his  air-castle  which,  seem- 
ingly, had  no  claim  to  anything  more  substan- 
tial or  probable  than  the  pure  visionary,  yet  he 
was  in  sober  earnest.  Thus  early  he  realized  in 
his  nature  the  spark  destined  to  kindle  the  spirit 
of  indomitable  will,  and  a  germ  in  his  soul  jDreg- 
nant  with  genius. 

This  recognition  of  his  capabihties,  together 
with  the  inspiration  of  the  moment,  the  situation 
and  its  well  defined  and  palpable  possibiUties,  de- 
veloped the  innate  bent  of  his  incUnation  ;  estab- 
lished the  secure  foundation  of  his  Ufe,  and 
indicated  the  road  to  its  successful  prosperity. 

Could  every  young  man  or  young  woman  thus 
understand  himself  or  herself,  and  appreciate  the 
possibilities  and  the  duties  of  life  when  embark- 
ing on  its  voyage,  while  the  heart  is  yet  pure 
and  innocent,  how  many  more  would  reach  the 
temple  of  Fame,  or  their  destined  goal  of  earthly 
usefulness,  if  not  of  glory,  than  ever  reach  the 
plane  even  of  their  aspirations  I 

But,  ah!  those  who  slip,  stumble  and  fall  I 
These  are  the  waifs  of  shadowy  despair.  Their 
conceptions  are  obscured  by  mad  infatuations. 
Blindly  they  gaze  at  the  temple  of  Fame  or  the 
goal  of  glory.  Upward  they  seek  to  rush.  They 
pay  no  heed  to  their  feet.  They  ignore  the 
admonition  that  the  path  is  narrow  and  rugged. 
They  forget  that  it  winds  up  slippery  steeps. 


They  perceive  not  the  pit  of  Infamy  yawning 
beneath. 

How  few,  alas,  comparatively,  early  ascertain 
their  legitimate  spheres  and  properly  set  out  to 
achieve  their  attainment ! 

Our  young  friend  was  not  one  of  this  hapless 
crew.  Looking  down  from  the  hill,  as  we  have 
seen  him,  upon  the  great  manufacturing  estab- 
lishment in  which  he  was  to  labor  on  the  mould- 
ing floor  as  an  humble  and  then  a  friendless 
employee  among  strangers,  he  resolved : 

"I  will  be  the  foreman  and  a  partner  in  that 
manufactory." 

This  was  a  grand  conception.  To  create  it 
required  some  elasticity  of  imagination. 

The  conception  was  nothing,  however,  com- 
pared with  the  task  of  its  execution.  This  in- 
volved long  years  of  slow,  tedious,  patient  toil. 
"What  a  nerve,  what  courage,  what  a  will, 
must  have  been  required  to  make  the  attempt ! 

But  this  admirable  young  man  had  faith  in 
himself ;  implicitly  trusted  the  feasibility  of  his 
ambitious  designs,  and  worked  and  waited. 

Self-confidence,  combined  with  true  manliood 
and  honest  motives,  is  a  beautiful  component  of 
sterling  character — something  to  provoke  ad- 
miration and  envy.  This  buoys  up  the  friendless 
on  the  lone  and  cheerless  voyage  of  life,  and 
gives  them  courage  and  strength  to  weather 
adverse  gales,  and  to  stem  the  bufieting  tides  of 
its  angry  sea. 

Our  courageous  and  self-confident  young  friend 
possessed  these  requisites  in  superabundance. 
He  also  found  his  proper  -  sphere,  and  entered 
upon  it  from  the  true  starting  point  where  the 
road  begins — at  the  foot,  content  to  rise  by 
slow  and  steady  stages.  He  was  resolved  to 
mount,  step  by  step,  making  sure  of  his  footing, 
rather  than  seek  to  fly  upward  at  one  wild 
bound. 

How  many  thus  start  blinded  by  visionary 
and  erroneous  conceptions  of  duty  and  the  road 
it  should  indicate,  only  to  find  their  delusion  has 
lured  them  on  to  failure,  if  not  to  ruin  I 

Half  of  many  lives,  naturally  endowed  with 
brilliant  talents,  and  actuated  by  worthy  motives, 
are  thus  wasted.  After  all  this  reckless  prodi- 
gality of  the  best  days  of  their  lives,  the  poor 


THE   NOBLE   PHILANTHKOPIST. 


271 


dupes  find  that  tlu-y  have  Ix-eu  all  these  years 
oil  the  wrong  road.  That  they  mistook  their  call- 
ing, and  must,  at  last,  start  in  some  other  at  the 
bottom,  and  ascend  slowly  or  else  never  rise,  but 
grope  and  grovel  ever  in  the  lowly  planes  of 
life. 

This  estimable  young  man  made  not  these 
mistakes.  He  started  right.  Ho  had  learned 
his  calling.  He  Avas  its  master.  He  went  to 
work  with  a  will. 

No  other  Avork  in  the  establishment  compared 
Avith  his — did  not  even  approach  its  perfection. 

Soon  he  is  placed  in  the  position  as  instructor 
to  all  the  other  Avorkmen,  much  to  the  disgust  of 
old  mechanics  who  are  "wedded  to  their  idols." 
Bujt  he  weans  them  fi'om  their  prejudices.  They 
soon  recognize  the  value  of  his  first  detested 
innovation.  From  a  spirit  disposed  to  persecute 
him,  they  quickly  change  to  his  willing  pupils. 

From  this  position  he  soon  rises  to  that  of 
book-keeper.  ,  Here  he  finds  latitude  for  the 
development  of  other  features  of  his  talents  in. 
the  ascending  scale.  This  opportunity  pavea 
the  way  to  other  advances  in  his  life  battle- 
lines. 

Some  years  pas-?.  A  change  comes  over  the 
spirit  of  his  dream  and  life.  A  new  light  dawns 
and  sheds  a  gleam  of  brightness  across  his  path- 
Avay,  and  kindles  an  emotion  of  strange  and  bliss- 
ful hope  in  his  breast.  It  is  something  refining, 
elevating,  ennobling — that  influence  which  brings 
man  upward  and  exalts  him  far  above  his  normal 
nature.  It  is  the  witching  fascination  of  a  young 
lady  of  finished  education  and  brilliant  accom- 
phshments — a  member  of  an  estimable  family. 
She  is  Nature's  sweet  princess.  G-raeious  good- 
ness is  her  attribute — her  dowry  from  the  realms 
of  the  blessed. 

For  him  to  fall  in  love  with  this  fair  creature 
was  not  unreasonable.  That  she  reciprocated,  but 
proves  her  good  taste  and  discriminating  judg- 
ment ;  for  who  else  in  ten  thousand  had  more 
treasure  of  Nature's  priceless  jewels  to  lay  at  a 
good  woman's  feet  ?  "Who  could  promise  her 
more  of  true  happiness  to  lighten  the  burdens  to 
be  borne  on  the  journey  of  life  ? 

Their  courtship  was  the  dream  of  blissful  fairy- 
land romance.     No  crosses  marred  its  beauty,  no 


disappointments  its  sweets,  and  no  sorroAvs 
blighted  its  joys.  With  them  true  love  flowed  in 
its  course  gently,  smoothly,  enchantingly. 

But  why  delay  the  truth?  They  married. 
For  some  time  Fortune  smiled  propitiously  upon 
this  promising  young  couple,  and  he  steadily 
advanced  up  the  hill. 

At  length  a  change  came ;  a  shadoAV  crossed 
the  threshold  of  his  prospects;  he  met  a  very 
unpromising  check  in  his  upAvard  career.  His 
employers  failed  in  the  panic  of  1857. 

They,  however,  made  arrangements  to  start 
again,  provided  they  could  raise  a  certain  sum  of 
money. 

After  exhausting  all  their  efforts,  only  a  part  of 
the  requisite  amount  could  be  raised ;  and  they 
Avere  on  the  point  of  relinquishing  the  enterprise 
in  despair. 

Now,  to  their  amazement,  our  young  friend 
steps  foi'Avard,  and  hands  them  his  check  for  the 
needed  sum  or  deficiency.  This  is  nearly  all  his 
savings  during  the  long  years  he  had  passed  in 
their  employment.  They  never  dreamed  that  he 
had  saved  such  a  sum. 

He  had  faith  in  them  and  their  business.  He 
did  not  despair  Avlien  they  failed. 

Long  had  he  bided  his  opportune  time  to  make 
one  grand  stride  upward  tOAvard  the  goal  he  early 
set  out  to  win.  It  came  at  last.  The  very  cir- 
cumstance that  seemed  to  be  the  knell  to  his 
every  hope  tending  in  that  direction,  afforded  him 
that  desired  opportunity. 

After  this,  he  went  to  work  with  new  life. 
For  seven  years  he  went  on  the  road,  and  thus 
built  up  a  stupendous  business. 

Then  he  returned  to  the  office  as  a  full  partner, 
and  assumed"  the  arduous  duties  of  managing  the 
correspondence,  the  credits,  and  the  finances  of 
his  firm. 

Now  does  his  talent  l)egin  to  develop  and  his 
genius  to  shine.  He  puts  life,  as  if  by  magic, 
into  every  department  of  his  business.  'He  be- 
comes its  very  soul  and  creator.  Onward  and 
upward  he  moves  it.  The  vision  which  his  fancy 
created  so  many  years  ago,  when  looking  down 
from  the  hill  on  the  works  below — that  phantom 
ship  of  airy  imagination — is  now  a  reality  before 
his  open  eyes.    He  treads  her  decks  in  the  proud 


272 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


dignity  of  her  captain,  and  stands  at  her  helm  as 
her  guiding  pilot. 

Patient  builder !  courageous  captain  !  match- 
less pilot  of  thy  own  ship  and  voyage,  ever 
ready  for  gale  or  storm  ! 

Upon  the  appearance  of  the  first  harbinger  of 
the  panic  of  1873;  he  at  once  began  to  prepare  for 
it.  When  its  darkest  hours  came  and  paralyzed 
the  great  commercial  centres  of  the  country,  he 
was  perfectly  easy,  with  a  large  suiplus  of  avail- 
able cash  in  bank. 

He  has  raised  his  house  and  business  to  be  the 
first,  in  its  fine,  in  the  world. 

Ultimately  he  became  the  regenerator,  the  up- 
lifter,  and  the  redeemer  of  Garland  Cloud.  By  a 
.strange  dispensation  of  mysterious  destiny,  he 
learned  the  wild  story  of  Cloud's  antithetical 
career  and  stormy  life.  He  concluded  that  Gar- 
land Cloud  was  Avorth  saving;  that  there  was 
usefulness  in  his  nature  and  being  that  might  be 
rendered  available  to  the  world ;  and  he  resolved 
to  save  him. 

With  the  exception  of  Cloud's  unscrupulous- 
ness,  generated  by  the  indiscretion  of  early  de- 
ception and  concealment — his  double-life  folly 
that  led  him  deeper  and  deeper  into  devious 
paths — these  were  kindred  spirits. 

By  nature.  Garland  Cloud  possessed  the  fine 
sentiments  and  noble  aspirations  of  true  greatness 
in  a  degree  equally  as  grand  as  his  new-found 
friend.  But  Garland  Cloud  got  on  the  wrong 
track,  and  thus  grew  to  be  unscrupulous.  The 
war  was  his  bane.  There  dark  ambition,  tinged 
with  a  hue  of  the  art  of  deception,  became  his 
ruling  passion. 

After  the  war,  the  influence  of  this  evil  tend- 
ency fastened  its  hold  upon  him  in  the  peace- 
ful pursuits  of  life,  and  drove  him  perpetually  and 
deeper  into  devious  paths,  and  on  to  earthly  de- 
struction and  social  damnation. 

Thus  was  he  enthralled  when  the  good  man 
found  and  resolved  to  help  and  to  rescue  him. 

This  good  man  did  not  proclaim  to  the  world 
that  he  purposed  to  save  Garland  Cloud ;  but  he 
talked  to  the  object  of  his  solicitude  instead.  He 
was  an  acute  judge  of  human  nature,  and  he  soon 
learned  to  read  Garland  Cloud,  and  read  him 
analytically. 


He  found  in  Cloud's  being  a  deeply-rooted  mc4- 
ancholy ;  a  tendency  to  brood  gloomily  over  the 
unpromising  future,  and  to  despair  of  life  for 
himself. 

These  were  maladies  he  resolved  to  cure  or 
abate.  His  remedy  was  the  philosophy  of  com- 
mon sense.  He  appealed  to  the  lethargic  man- 
hood of  Cloud,  in  substance  about  as  follows : 

"  You  are,"  he  said,  "  laboring  under  an  erro- 
neous delusion.  It  is  not  all  over  with  you  in 
this  world — far  from  it.  Life  is  worth  living  to 
you.  To  abandon  and  shirk  its  duties  is  cowardice 
too  far  beneath  your  nature  and  true  character  to 
be  possible  for  you  to  yield  to  such  unmanly  pre- 
dispositions. I  want  to  help — I  mean  to  save 
you.     But  you  must  help  me. 

"  Place  yourself  on  the  broad  and  solid  founda- 
tion of  truth;  stick  to  and  build  upon  it,  guaging 
your  structure  by  the  rule  of  honor,  and  modeling 
it  by  the  draft  of  integrity. 

"  If  you  are  hesitating — yield  in  the  slightest 
degree  to  shufiiing  duplicity  and  the  baneful  in- 
fluence of  deception,  you  are  lost  indeed. 

"Your  reputation  as  a  soldier  of  the  'Lost 
Cause '  is  beautiful  as  a  brave  and  intrepid  man. 
But  you  must  now  summons  to  your  aid  a 
grander  courage  than  anj^  that  ever  swayed  the 
soldier  in  the  wild  fury  of  the  charge,  or  nerved 
him  to  stand  and  meet  death  at'  his  post — a  sub- 
lime, moral  courage. 

"This  is  the  only  antidote  for  'Moral  Cow- 
ardice;' what  you  admit  has  for  many  years  been 
your  bane. 

"  Know  and  conquer  thyself,  my  despondent 
friend,  and  you  will  gain  the  grandest  victory  of  life. 

"This  has  been  my  hardest  conflict — the  cease- 
less war  with  myself  to  subdue  my  convulsing 
passions,  and  to  curb  my  inordinate  ambition. 

"  Had  I  been  persecuted  and  tempted  as  you 
have  been,  I  shudder  at  the  bare  contemplation 
of  what  might  have  been  the  consequences. 

"You  can  live  for  humanity,  but  not  truly  after 
you  abandon  yourself.  Self-forsaken  people  are 
the  most  desolate  waifs  of  the  earth. 

"  He  who  ceases  to  be  a  friend  to  himself,  can 
little  expect  to  attract  or  retain  the  friendship  of 
others.  No  more  can  he  who  respects  not  hiniseK 
hope  for  respect  from  other  people. 


THE  NOBLE  PHILANTHEOPIST. 


273 


"  Rise  up,  and  be  superior  to  your  weakness, 
jour  misgivings,  and  your  most  sad  want  of  faith 
in  yourself ! 

"  Many  men  are  guilty  of  greater  wrongs  than 
you  have  ever  committed,  and  never  suffer  the 
least  reproach. 

"All  men  make  mistakes,  greater  or  smaller; 
mistakes  that  are  really  not  crimes.  Your  faults 
are  of  this  character.  Your  mistakes  are  grave ; 
but  it  is  the  consequences  which  they  entailed, 
rather  than  the  acts  themselves,  that  constitute 
the  most  serious  phase  of  your  distress. 

"  To  any  logical  mind,  it  is  clear  that  your  mind 
has  never  been  criminal.  Your  ambition  and 
your  fanaticism  on  the  subject  of  helping  the 
poor  tillers  of  the  soil  of  your  fair  and  sunny 
laud,  drove  you  to  the  desperation  of  deeming 
that  the  end  to  be  attained  abundantly  justified 
the  means. 

"  This  rendered  you  unscrupulous.  From  this 
ebbed  state  of  moral  compunctions  it  was  but  an 
easy  and  a  natural  step  to  mistakes. 

"  Your  motives  were  high  and  noble.  You.had 
gigantic  undertakings  to  promote.  These  required 
vast  sums  of  money,  which  you  did  not  have,  and  ■ 
could  not  legitimately  command. 
,  "  While  your  enterprises  were  feasible  and  en- 
titled to  charitable  consideration,  they  were  not 
shaped  so  as  to  attract  the  financial  aid  they  de- 
served. Their  basis  could  not  be  recognized  in 
the  light  of  approved  security,  when  presented 
to  the  close  and  critical  scrutiny  of  money  lend- 
ers. You  had  faith  in  yourself  and  your  enter- 
prises. More  than  this,  you  believed  that  you 
should  have  received  the  encouragement  and  the 
assistance  wanted.  The  disappointment  in  not 
receiving  these  embittered  your  mind  and  soured 
your  disposition. 

"Now  you  had  reached  that  point  when  it  was 
easy  for  you  to  conclude  that  to  obtain  the  money 
with  deceptive  security  was  no  serious  wrong. 
You  reasoned  that  you  would  be  excusable  for 
obtaining  the  same  money  by  strategy  which  you 
believed  you  had  failed  to  obtain  legitimately. 

"  But  here  was  your  mortal  mistake.  Nothing 
could  justify  the  wrong  thus  committed.  No  sort 
of  deception  will  thrive  forever.  Sooner  or  later 
it  must  come  to  grief  and,  most  likely,  ruin  its  in- 


fatuated votary,  no  matter  what  the  nature  of  his 
artifice  may  be,  nor  how  prominent  his  own 
character  and  position  in  society  and  business. 

"  Had  your  masked  character  remained  unex- 
posed, this  awful  experience  and  terrible  lesson  to 
you  would  have  been  in  vain.  It  would  have 
been  simply  as  impossible  for  you  to  return  to 
paths  of  honor,  and  to  steer  your  course  with  the 
helm  of  integrity  and  duty,  as  it  is  to  turn  the 
current  of  a  mighty  river  back  towards  its 
source. 

"  You  were  wrong,  and  nothing  could  ever  put 
j'ou  right  short  of  fuU  confession  or  open  expos- 
ure. The  first  you  wanted  the  moral  courage  to 
make.  Mercifully,  the  last  was  made  for  you. 
Thus  are  you  placed  right.  Easily  now  may  you 
fulfill  a  high  and  noble  destiny.  To  assist  you  to 
do  this  shall  be  my  earnest  solicitude  and  special 
province." 

Through  this  friend  Garland  Cloud  became 
acquainted  with  other  prominent  people,  who 
were  of  great  importance  to  his  future  and  the 
plans  of  life  mapped  out  and  designed  by  him  to 
be  followed. 

Could  every  weak  and  hesitating  man,  "  who 
has  sinned,  and  suffered  for  his  sin,"  have  a  simi- 
lar friendly  and  helping  hand  extended  to  him  at 
the  opportune  moment,  many  would  be  uplifted, 
regenerated  and  redeemed  who  ever  continue  to 
drift  down  the  muddy  current  of  the  maelstrom 
of  life,  to  the  seething  eddy  and  destructive  whirl- 
pool of  hopeless  perdition.  Probably  Garland 
Cloud  might  not  have  thus  continued  to  drift, 
had  he  never  met  this  friend  of  destiny,  as  his 
mind  had  become  settled  and  his  plans  been  form- 
ed, as  to  the  future,  many  months  before  the 
first  meeting  with  this  friend ;  yet  certain  it  is 
that  he  would  have  had  much  less  to  cheer  and 
sustain  him  in  the  unequal  and  discouraging  strug- 
gles, with  the  almost  insurmountable  obstacles 
thickly  interposed  to  intercept  his  course,  in  the 
correct  voyage  of  life.  Many  years  longer  would 
it  have  taken  him  to  reach  the  haven  which  he 
set  out  to  gain,  had  he  never  known  and  received 
the  friendship  of  The  Noble  Philanthropist. 


274 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


CHAPTER  LXXI. 

LETTERS    OF    COMFORT    AND    WARNING. 

"  The  quality  of  mercy  Is  not  strained ; 
It  droppeth  as  the  gentle  rain  from  Heaven, 
Upon  the  place  beneath  :  it  Is  twice  bless'd ; 
It  blesses  him  that  gives  and  him  that  takes; 
It  is  enthroned  In  the  hearts  of  kings ; 
It  Is  an  attribute  to  God  himself." 

— Shakspeaee. 

A  MONTH  after  the  Sabbath-day's  interview  be- 
tween Cloud  and  Pleasington,  the  former  receives 
from  the  latter,  by  the  trusty  hand  of  their  mutual 
courier,  a  note  with  a  letter  and  its  enclosure  re- 
ceived by  Pleasington  from  the  friends  of  his  early 
years,  or  their  representative,  in  answer  to  the 
one  sent  them,  in  pursuance  to  the  resolution 
formed  during  the  interview  with  Cloud.  Both 
letters  had  passed  over  the  contraband  under- 
ground mail  route.  The  enclosure  was  in  a  doubly 
sealed  envelope  and  addressed  in  well  remem- 
bered lady  characters  : 


CoL.  Garland  Cloud. 


In  durance  of  distress." 


This  Cloud  carefully  lays  aside,  as  if  touched 
by  a  tlirill  of  pious  awe  at  beholding  it — a  sad 
and  painful  reminiscence  of  the  days  that  are 
dead — and  takes  up  Pleasington's  letter,  which  is 
in  a  neat,  but  unknown  lady's  hand.  It  is  as  fol- 
lows : 

" Square,  New  York,  Nov.,  1880. 

"  Major  Lawrence  Pleasington  : 

"My  long  mourned  and  esteemed  Friend: 

"  Your  most  unexpected  yet 
thrice  welcome  letter,  which  is  held  in  unspeak- 
able and  indescribable  appreciation,  came  duly  to 
hand  in  Orlando's  absence  on  a  Southern  business 
tour,  which  will  be  prolonged  for  many  weeks  to 
come.  In  accordance  with  his  parting  instruction 
relative  to  all  letters  received  to  his  private  ad- 
dress, yours  was  opened  by  me. 

"  Oh !  when  I  saw  that  it  was  from  you,  our 
long-sought  friend  whom  we  have  mourned  for 
these  six  years  as  dead  or  lost  to  us  foi-evur,  and 


of  whom  we  have  sought  the  country  over,' in 
every  quarter  without  the  gloomy  confines  of 
prison  walls,  information,  or  a  clue  that  might  lead 
to  it,  I  cannot  attempt  to  describe  to  you  the 
rapturous  ecstacies  of  joy  that  I  experienced ;  let 
it  suffice  to  say  that  it  was  supremely  full. 

"  Your  sad  and  cruel  fate,  for  peculiarly  serious 
reasons,  has  been  excruciatingly  painful  to  us,  and 
has  enshrined  you  in  our  hearts  with  all  the  sanc- 
tity of  endearing  affection  that  can  be  claimed  as 
a  Divine  attribute  appertaining  to  kindred  tics  and 
blood.  What  stronger  assurance  can  I  offer  you 
of  our  constant  friendship  and  undying  love  ? 

"  The  odium  of  your  dungeon  life,  of  which  you 
write  so  feelingly  and  pathetically,  may  apply  to 
the  heartless,  unfeeling  and  unthinking  world,  but 
it  is  foreign  to  any  degree  of  relation  to  us,  who  are 
not  the  world,  but  your  friends  who  hold  you  as 
sacredly  dear  as  our  own  sweet  lives. 

"  How  sad  is  this  last  cruel  ordeal  through 
which  you  are  passing ;  and  what  strange  work- 
ings brought  it  about ! 

"  But  for  his  train  arriving  an  hour  behind 
time,  Orlando  would  have  received  you  in  his 
own  arms  when  you  emerged  from  the  dreary 
prison.  When  he  called  at  the  door  you  were 
gone — whither  the  officials  could  not  tell. 

"  Prom  that  moment  we  have  had  no  tidings 
from  you,  until  this  propitious  day  dawned  to 
light  the  way  for  your  letter  to  break  in  upon  us 
a  grateful  surprise,  and  dispel  the  corroding  sus- 
pense of  our  melancholy  despair ;  and,  further- 
more, to  re-inspire  us  with  assuring  hope,  that 
the  gratifying  reality  of  again  beholding  your 
face  and  feeling  the  warm  and  re-animated  clasp 
of  your  hand,  will  yet  be  ours;  and  that  we  may 
experience  the  comforting  consolation  which  will 
accrue  to  us  from  being  able  to  repair  the  cruel 
wrongs  of  which  you  have  been  the  hapless  vic- 
tim, so  far  as  such  may  be  within  the  scope  of 
human  power  to  accomplish. 

"  How  we  all  join  with  you  in  pitying  your 
strange  friend.  Col.  Cloud,  through  whom,  as  a 
fortuitous  medium,  you  will  be  restored  to  us. 
How  fortunate  that  he  knew  of  your  innocence, 
and  how  providential  that  he  should  be  thrown 
with  you  to  tell  you  about  it,  as  such  a  sad  fate 
was  destined  to  be  bis;  but  for  which  circum- 


LETTEKS  OF  COMFOBT  AKD  WAENING. 


275 


stance,  as  you  write  us,  we  .should  never  have 
heard  from  you  again. 

"  We  have  held  a  family  meeting  of  all  the 
families  of  the  members  of  Orlando's  firm — I,  as 
the  representative  of  ours— and  talked  over  your 
affairs,  and  the  result  is  that  I  have  been  com- 
missioned to  write  to  you  that  you  will  be  placed 
in  charge  of  most  important  Southern  interests, 
on  ten  times  more  favorable  terms  than  those 
which  you  seek ;  that  you  will  be  supplied  with 
a  proper  suit  of  clothing  in  which  to  pass  the 
portal  of  the  prison ;  and  that  a  carriage  will  be 
in  waiting  to  speed  you  away  to  safety  and 
friends  the  moment  you  have  crossed  the  cruel, 
forbidding  threshold  of  that  dreary,  unhallowed 
habitation. 

"Please  hand  or  send  the  enclosure  by  safe 
conveyance  to  Col.  Cloud. 

"  Now,  my  poor  friend,  what  more  can  I  say 
to  you  ? 

"  I  shall  forward  your  letter  to  Orlando,  from 
whom  you  may  expect  a  letter  before  he  returns 
home. 

"  You  must  write  to  us  often ;  and  we,  on  our 
part,  will  not  neglect  to  write  you,  nor  to  do 
everything  else  in  our  power  that  we  deem 
might  comfort  or  cheer  you  in  your  lone  Avay. 

"  Your  true  and  sympathetic  friend, 

"Eva  Oglethrop." 


This  letter  read.  Cloud  folds  and  returns  it  to 
its  envelope,  lays  it  aside,  and  then  taking  up 
the  other  one,  which  he  proceeds  to  open  with  a 
hand  trembling  like  the  aspen  leaf  in  the  wind, 
while  his  lips  are  pale  as  salt,  he  slowly  reads 
with  stifled  emotion : 

" Square,  New  York,  Nov.,  1880. 

"CoL.  Cloud: 

"  Ji^  unforgotten  and  never  forsaken  friend : 

"  Let  me  conjure  you,  in  the  name  of 
the  memory  of  the  dark  and  trying  times  in 
which  our  young  friendship  was  born,  out  of 
which  sprung  the  'Soldier's  Family  Relief  Asso- 
ciation,' and  which  inspired  yon  with  that  strange 
fancy  to  christen  me  '  The  Angel  of  Consolation,' 
— though  unworthy  that  I  was  and  am,  to  have  be- 


stowed upon  me  a  name  that  caused  you  to  com- 
mit sacrilege  when  you  first  associated  it  with 
me,  yet  still  to  this  day  it  remains  an  undimin- 
ished incentive  with  me  to  continue  to  strive 
more  earnestly  to  become  worthier  of  it,  by  dis- 
pensing all  the  charity  I  can  in  missions  of  mercy 
— do  not  unkindly  and  unjustly  censure  my  seem- 
ing impropriety  in  overstepping  the  prescribed 
bounds  of  etiquette  so  far  as  to  venture  to  in- 
dict a  letter  to  you.  My  excuse  must  plead  in 
extenuation  for  my  fault,  should  you  deem  me 
guilty  of  a  serious  one. 

"  Circumstances  which  I  knew  that  embittered 
yom^  life  ;  some  things  I  have  recently  heard  rela- 
tive to  your  checkered  career,  extending  over  a 
period  of  ten  years  of  wandering,  and  a  sketch 
in  Major  Pleasington's  letter  describing  your 
present  gloomy  and  painful  state  of  mind,  rela- 
tive to  your  personality  for  yourself  alone, 
prompt  and  actuate  me  with  the  purest  motives 
of  unselfish  charity  to  write  you  this  letter,  be- 
cause I  feel  that  I  am  thus  much  indebted  to  you. 

"Alas!  that  I  must  ever  feel  that  but  for  me 
— I  who  was  designed  to  be  your  evil  genius — 
all  the  trying  scenes  through  v/hich  you  have 
passed  during  those  dreary,  tedious  years,  and 
through  which  you  are  now  passing;  the  marks 
of  wrong  that  you  have  left  strewn  along  your 
backward  track ;  your  suffering  and  your  woes, 
would  never  have  been. '  Yet  God  in  Heaven 
knows  that  on  my  part  it  was  not  willful.  Of 
all  persons  on  this  earth,  not  of  ni}"  own  house 
and  heart,  you  would  have  been  the  last  whom  I 
Avould  have  caused  pain  or  led  into  difficulties 
and  trouble. 

"  To  me  it  matters  not  what  you  have  been 
since  we  last  met,  what  you  are  now,  or  what 
you  may  be  hereafter — I  shall  remember  only 
what  you  were  then,  and  what  you  had  been 
previous  to  that  time  ;  which  was  the  cruel  and 
fatal  crisis  in  your  life ;  which  was  brought  upon 
you  by  the  basest  and  the  most  fiendish  treachery 
and  falsehood  ever  perpetrated  upon  an  inoffen- 
sive victim  within  the  compass  of  my  knowledge. 
I  can  think  of  you  only  to  be  impressed  anew 
with  the  overwhelming  conviction  that  but  for 
that  cruel  stab  of  Envy's  envenomed  dagger,  you 
would  ever  have   remained  true  and  noble  and 


276 


MYSTIC  EOMAXCES   OF   THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


good,  because  I  know  that  all  of  wrong  that  you 
have  done  has  been  contrary  to  your  nature. 
But  enough  of  this,  and  something  more  of  the 
true  subject  matter  of  my  letter. 

"  Our  family  owes  you  an  enormous  debt  of 
gratitude,  Avith  its  accrued  and  compounded  in- 
terest of  now  nearly  twenty  years,  not  one  iota 
of  which  has  ever  been  paid.  The  time  has  now 
come,  or  is  near  at  hand,  when  we  can  oflfer  to 
discharge  a  portion  of  it  with  a  degree  of  confi- 
dential propriety  so  impressively  and  manifestly 
appropriate  as  scarcely  to  admit  the  excuse  for 
hesitating  on  the  ground  of  fear  that  such  action 
on  our  part  would  or  might  give  you  offence,  or 
wound  the  sensitive  impulses  of  your  unconquer- 
able pride,  which  we  hope,  and  which,  permit  me 
to  entreat,  that  you  will  accept,  leaving  the  mat- 
ter entirely  with  us  to  arrange.  Assure  me  that 
you  will  do  this,  and  I  will  then  unfold  to  you 
all  our  plans. 

"  I  am  exceedingly  anxious  to  have  from  you 
the  true  outlines  of  the  story  of  your  life  through 
the  trials  of  those  ten  years  while  we  supposed 
you  dead;  and  most  especially  those  features 
relative  to  your  attempted  suicide  at  the  time  of 
your  disappearance  from  the  '  Future  City.'  With 
that  exception  I  have  had  a  version  of  most  of 
the  features  of  the  sad  narrative  as  supplied  by 
other  people.  I  should  like  to  know  what  rela- 
tion your  plans  for  the  future  of  this  sad  hfe  bear 
to  the  life  of  that  period  of  ten  years.  If  you 
will  condescend  to  take  the  trouble  upon  your- 
self and  endure  the  pain  which  it  will  inflict, 
please  furnish  it  to  me  in  sacred  confidence,  if 
you  wish.  Please,  I  beg  of  you,  do  me  this 
favor  on  the  score  of  old  friendship  which,  though 
ill-fated  it  was  to  you,  is  still  with  me  as  lasting 
as  life  itself. 

"  While  you  were  in  the  world  of  libertj^,  after 
your  return  to  your  native  region,  I  should  have 
written  to  you,  but  I  never  was  able  to  learn 
your  proper  address.  Had  we  been  at  home 
while  you  were  in  jail,  we  should  have  come  to 
see  you,  whether  you  were  willing  or  not. 

"  It  was  a  sad  disappointment  to  us  all  when 
we  received  your  message  informing  us  that  you 
would  neither  receive  our  visits  nor  our  tokens 
of   friendship  in   the   form   of   little    articles  to 


mitigate  the  rigorous  severity  and  the  stern 
hardships  of  prison  life,  and  that  you  forbid  us  to 
Avrite  you  one  Tetter,  and  refused  to  write  a  hne 
to  us.  Now  let  me  appeal  to  the  youthful  ten- 
derness and  the  noble  magnanimity  of  Garland 
Cloud's  heart — Garland  Cloud,  the  soldier  boy — 
as  it  was  from  the  '  Plains  of  Manassas '  to  the 
'Hills  of  Gettysburg.'  Was  not  this  cruel  treat- 
ment to  friends  whose  hearts  beat  for  you  in 
tender  sympathy,  and  were  filled  with  emotions 
of  true  and  zealous  interest  in  you  and  your 
welfare  ? 

"  I  feel  a  deep  and  solicitous  interest  in  and 
for  the  success  of  the  work  which  Major  Pleas- 
ington  wrote  that  you  and  he  were  engaged  in 
assisting  some  author  to  compile.  This,  I 
know,  might  be  so  wrought  as  to  be  the  means 
of  producing  much  good  in  the  world.  I  should 
not  have  so  far  trangressed  against  your  most 
emphatic  injunction,  as  to  write  you  this  or  anv 
other  letter  while  your  sojourn  continues  in 
that  lonesome  prison-house,  had  I  not  met  with 
this  opportunity  to  send  it  to  you  without  being 
subjected  to  the  scrutiny  of  other  eyes  before  it 
would  be  greeted  by  yours.  The  officer  of  the 
prison,  Avhowas  the  bearer  of  Major  Pleasington's 
letter,  boldly  made  the  proposition  to  Mrs.  Ogle- 
thorp  to  perform  similar  services  between  the 
local  post-office  of  the  village  and  the  prison,  for 
a  money  consideration,  which  was  accepted. 
You  can  write  to  us  and  we  to  you  under  cover 
of  the  same  arrangement,  provided  that  you  are 
willing.  I  cannot  imagine  that  you  could  be  so 
cruel  as  to  object.  I  know  that  if  you  do,  it 
would  not  be  your  true  self,  nor  the  natural 
promptings  of  your  ^  heart,  that  you  will  be 
obeying.  I  cannot  believe,  though  you  were  to 
tell  me  so  a  thousand  times  over,  and  all  the 
world  would  bear  you  witness  that  it  is  so,  that 
all  the  true  and  the  good  impulses  that  once  were 
yours  have  been  utterly  and  hopelessly  crushed 
out  of  your  being. 

"  Then  you  will  write  a  line,  if  but  one,  to  say 
that  cruel  faretvell  which  you  did  not  even  vouch- 
safe in  that  by-gone  time  of  bitterness  to 

"Your  ever  changeless  friend, 

"C-VRHiK  Y.  Flowers." 


LETTEKS  OF  COMFOKT  AND  WARNING. 


277 


In  reply  to  this  pressing  letter  Cloud  Avrote  : 

"November,  1880. 
"Mrs.  Carrie  V.  Flowers: 

'■'■  Friendly  object  of  my  vanished  dreams: 
"  I  shall  not  atter^pt  to  describe  to  you  the  emo- 
tions that  thrilled  my  being  when  I  merely  glanced 
at  the  long  and  distinctly  well-remembered  char- 
acters of  the  address  on  the  envelope  covering 
your  letter.  What,  then,  can  I  say  of  the  letter 
itself?  Silence  most  eloquently  answers  this 
question. 

"  I  write  briefly,  merely  to  say,  with  reference 
to  your  letter,  that  it  is  impossible  for  me  to 
answer  it  now,  but  that  I  shall  do  so,  and  fully, 
by  Pleasington,  when  he  goes  hence,  and  to  make 
a  reciprocal  request  of  you. 

"  Should  the  letter  which  I  wrote  you  in  the 
winter  of  1861,  relative  to  the  outpost  and  scout- 
ing service,  by  any  chance  have  survived  the 
lapse  of  time  among  the  rubbish  of  the  old  home- 
stead, and  may  now  be  found,  I  should  be  under 
lasting  obhgations  if  you  would  write  and  have 
it  sent  to  you,  and  then  send  it  to  me.  I  want 
some  data  which  it  contains  to  supply  a  deficiency 
in  the  early  chapters  of  the  work  to  which  you 
referred  in  your  letter. 

"Pray,  then,  consider  this  letter  as  being 
purely  of  an  informal  business  character;  and 
please  write  me  one  solely  upon  the  subject  to 
which  it  refers. 

"In  conclusion,  I  beg  to  assure  you  that  I  am 
not  insensible  to  a  feeling  of  gratitude  for  the 
rich  benevolence  of  your  true  friendship,  and 
that  my  appreciation  of  the  generous  charity 
manifested  in  bestowing  upon  me  so  much  lavish 
sympathy,  is  not  indifferently  wanting. 

"Thanking  you  for  your  extreme  kindness, 
and  your  compassionate  solicitude  to  and  for 
me  and  my  welfare,  I  am,  with  shameful  re- 
gret, "  Your  lost  friend, 

"  Garland  Cloud." 


By  an  early  mail  came  this  reply : 

"  December,  1880. 
"  CoL.  Cloud  : 

"  My  Reclaimed  Friend: 

"  I  have  partially  complied  with  your  request, 

contained  in  your  much-appreciated  letter,  which 


is  proof  positive,  that  though  crushed  beneath 
the  merciless  force  of  circumstances  and  the 
cruel  weight  of  misfortune,  you  are  still  enough 
your  former  self  to  concede  to  the  petitions  of 
your  fi-iends  what  they  solicit,  but  in  your  own 
way  and  time.  But  I  will  refrain  from  quarrel- 
ing Avith  you  about  it. 

"  You  do  me  much  injustice  to  imagine  that 
the  correspondence  to  which  you  refer  had  either 
been  lost,  destroyed,  or  left  among  the  cast- 
away rubbish  of  the  dear  old  Valley  Mansion — 
those  sad  letters,  solemn  reminiscences  of  those 
anxious  days,  those  trying  weeks,  those  tedious 
months  and  those  weary  years.  While  I  live 
and  retain  one  keepsake  or  one  treasured  jewel  of 
my  tender  years,  those  historical  sheets  of  paper 
will  remain  preserved  among  them.  Rememfiei- 
that  the  hand  that  traced  their  lines  by  the 
Avintry  bivouac  fire,  though  the  bleeding  heart 
that  prompted  its  motion  otill  beats  on,  has  been 
long  years  mingling  with  its  mother  dust. 

"  No ;  you  can't  have  that  letter.  It  is  yellow 
with  age,  and  marked  and  streaked  and  blmxed 
with  traces  of  my  maiden  tear.-drops — the  first 
that  ever  man,  not  related  to  me  by  kindred  ties 
of  blood,  caused  me  to  shed.  Then,  again,  the 
tears  of  mature  womanhood  were  rained  upon 
it ;  and  now,  to-day,  those  of  the  wife — the 
faithful  and  devoted  wife— have  once  more  mois- 
tened its  pages. 

"I  have  made  you  a  faithful  copy  of  that  letter, 
together  with  two  or  tliree  of  my  own  to  you 
and  one  or  two  others  of  yours  to  me,  all  of  about 
the  same  date,  which  I  trust  will  serve  your  pur- 
pose just  as  well  as  the  originals.  Upon  these 
no  other  eye  than  mine  has  ever  gazed  since  first 
I  looked  at  them.  They  will  continue  to  be  held 
thus  sacred,  as  though  they  Avere  mementoes  of  the  ■ 
dead,  so  long  as  I  retain  my  faculties  and  sight. 
They  recall  youthful  dreams  associated  Avith  a 
young  friendship,  and  remind  me  of  a  new  friend 
who  Avas  then  sober,  grave,  serious  and  true. 

"  Should  it  be  in  my  power  to  give,  or  to  obtain 
for  you,  any  other  information,  to  aid  the  Avork 
which  you  have  become  enlisted  in,  please  let  me 
know  what  it  is. 

"I  am  much  gratified  to  know  that  you  have 
formed  a  resolution  to  devote  your  life  to  good 


278 


MTSTIC  ROMANCES   OF   THE  BLUE  AND  THE   GREY. 


work;  to  promote  the  cause  of  humanity,  which 
is  the  course  to  pursue  to  atone  for  the  errors  and 
the  crimes  of  the  past ;  to  redeem  your  clouded 
life  upon  the  earth,  and  to  secure  salvation  for 
the  life  eternal.  To  do  all  the  good  that  we  can 
and  the  least  ill  that  is  possible  in  this  life,  is  life's 
great  duty  and  supreme  object;  and  doing  good 
consists  in  alleviating  suffering,  soothing  sorrow, 
striving  to  influence  the  good  to  remain  so,  or  to 
become  better  for  the  sake  of  the  reward  it  will 
give  in  this  world ;  to  induce  the  vicious  and  the 
criminal  to  turn  from  their  forbidden  ways,  for  the 
sake  of  escaping  the  pain  of  the  penalties  to 
which  they  lead  in  this  life ;  instructing  the  igno- 
rant; encouraging  the  despondent;  comforting 
the  sick  and  the  distressed;  declaiming  against 
the  errors  and  the  deceptions  of  society ;  and,  in  a 
word,  raising  the  moral  tone  and  sentiment  of 
those  with  whom  we  come  in  contact  in  the  walks 
of  daily  life,  by  our  conversation  and  example 
in  all  that  we  say  and  do.  Whether  they  be  our 
inferiors,  our  equals,  or  our  superiors,  this  mat- 
ters not;  it  is  always  possible  for  us  to  leave  some 
good  impression,  however  small  it  may  be,  upon 
the  minds  of  the  wisest  and  the  best  of  them,  that, 
not  infrequently,  amounts  to  actual  influence, 
and  promoting  the  cause  and  advancing  the  in- 
terest of  humanity.  Such  are  what  I  deem  true 
principles  of  rehgion,  and  I  tremble  for  the  pro- 
fessors of  the  Cliristain  faith  and  character  who 
neglect  to  practice  the  same. 

"Since  the  first  wintry  morning,  now  nine- 
teen years  ago,  that  I  quitted  the  cheerful  hearth 
of  my  father's  mansion  to  face  the  driven  snow 
and  the  northern  storm  blast,  on  a  mission  in  my 
espoused  cause,  to  'The  Mountain  Cabins,'  I  have 
never  once  let  the  sun  go  down  without  having 
tried  to  accomplish  some  good,  or  to  gladden  some 
heart,  and  to  my  latest  day  I  crave  to  be  able  to 
continue  to  do  the  same. 

"  Now  I  want  to  say  to  you  that  this  briny, 
tear-stained,  time-yellowed  letter  of  yours,  of 
which  I  have  made  you  the  copy,  was  the  influ- 
ence that  led  to  this,  as  well  as  to  the  revolution- 
izing of  the  lives  of  two  families  and  the  blend- 
ing of  them  together — my  father's  and  that  of 
'The  Angels  of  the  mountain.'  I  know  of  other 
influences  and  examples  in  your  poor  sad-fated 


life  that  have  produced  as  much  good  as  this  just 
named ;  and  I  doubt  not,  that  among  your  seeds 
of  blighting  error  and  damning  crime  you  have 
sown  some  good  seeds  that  are  producing  fruits. 

"  How  heart-rending  to  think  that  you  .should 
have  ever  sown  any  bad  seed,  as  well  as  to  know 
your  awful  fate ! 

"  Oh,  my  hapless  friend !  look  upon  these  pages 
all  blotted  by  the  blinding  tears — yes,  humble 
tears,  of  once  proud  and  haughty,  disdainful, 
scornful,  aristocratic  Carrie  Harman,  and  remem- 
ber that  she  was  converted  to  the  cause  of  hu- 
manity and  usefulness  by  the  influence  of  the 
distant  acts  and  the  then  provokingly  indifferent 
letters  of  an  humble  mountain  boy ;  a  boy  upon 
whom,-  she  now  blushes  to  admit,  before  that 
time  she  would  have  looked  down  Avith  stunning 
contempt,:  yes,  with  far  more  uncharitableness 
than  she  would  now  look  upon  the  most  degraded 
and  abandoned  wretch  as  he  emerges  from  your 
stern  and  merciless  prison  walls;  for  she  could, 
without  the  least  reluctance,  take  him  b.y  th.e 
hand  and  say,  '  my  friend,  come  forth,  go  into 
better  ways,  let  me  intreat  you,  and  be  a  man.' 
Then  I  beg  of  you,  that  with-  all  your  well  ma- 
tured experience  and  the  consummate  lessons  of 
life  that  it  has  taught  you  in  its  hard  schools, 
you  do  not  despair  of  doing  good  even  while  yon 
are  thus  shut  out  from  the  world,  nor  of  doing 
more  good  hereafter  than  you  have  ever  done  or 
than  you  ever  could  have  done  but  for  your  mis- 
fortunes. Now  convert  them  into  blessings  for 
the  human  race ;  return  to  your  true  self  and  let 
your  natural  impulses  rule  your  life  and  be  once 
again  Grarland  Cloud. 

"This  will  smooth  your  rugged  pathway  and 
streAV  along  its  desolate  margins  a  few  cheering* 
flowers.  It  will  last  but  a  little  time,  the  sorrow- 
ful journey  will  be  a  short  one  and  soon  over; 
at  most,  fifty  years  will  end  it :— a  little  more  than 
twice  the  time  that  has  elapsed  since  first  wc 
were  friends.  Oh!  then,  my  disconsolate  friend, 
take  courage  and  be  brave  again  as  of  yore.  But 
not  that  youthful  courage  that  defied  the  sabre's 
menacing  blade  and  the  cannon's  frown  of  death. 
No,  but  that  moral  courage — something  higher 
and  nobler — that  can  stand  unmoved  before  the 
scornful  uncharitableness  of  the  unthinking  world 


LETTERS  OF  COMFORT  AND  WARNING. 


279 


and  there  dare  to  perform  an  unpleasant  and  an 
unthankful  duty. 

"  How  impatiently  I  shall  await  that  promised 
letter.  Please  reward  my  anxious  suspense  by 
opening  to  me  your  heart — 'to  a  friend  that  not 
forsakes.' 

"  In  conclusion,  I  pray  that  you  will  remember 
the  beautiful  sentiment  and  the  sublime  truths 
contained  in  the  closing  lines  of  your  favorite 
song,  which  I  often  sing,  and  think  of  you : 

"  'But  there  is  a  future,  Oh,  thank  God, 
Of  life  this  is  so  small  a  part: 
'Tis  dust  to  dust  beneath  the  sod, 
But  there,  up  there,  'tis  heart  to  heart.' 

"Your  true  and  devoted  friend, 

"  Carrie  V.  Flowers." 


On  the  last  night  of  the  year  1880,  Lawrence 
Pleasington  wrote  the  -following  to  enclose  in  a 
letter  to  one  of  his  friends : 

"Watching  -with  the  Dying  Year  in  a  Dun- 
geon's Gloom. 

"  Death  is  a  sad  contemplation — the  death  of 
friends  and  the  death  of  hope — because  the  places 
of  the  departed  must  be  re-supphed  by  objects 
that  are  new  and  untried ;  the  former  by  persons 
perchance  less  kind  and  more  inconstant,  and 
the  latter  by  despair. 

"  To-night  I  am  keeping  a  solitary  vigil  in  my 
lonely,  cheerless  cell,  watching  the  departure  of 
one,  and  the  arrival  of  another  friend — the  death 
of  the  old  and  the  birth  of  the  new  year. 

"  With  me,  each  dying  year  has  been  much  the 
same  as  those  that  had  long  since  been  passing 
away  before  it — born  in  despair,  and  dying  with- 
out bringing  me  a  hope  for  this  world.  But 
lately  I  have  espied  a  faint  gleam  of  hope  low 
down  on  the  horizon  of  my  benighted  sky,  which 
will  cause  the  new  year  to  dawn  with  a  shade  of 
brightness  such  as  I  had  never  before  dared  to 
dream  would  again  be  known  to  me.  Now  I 
cherish  a  shade  of  hope  that  I  may  yet  be  of 
some  service  to  the  human  race. 

"  Midnight  in  a  dungeon's  spectral  and  haunted 
confines  is  a  terrible  thing;  a  reality  of  which  no 
one  on  this  earth  can  ever  form  an  adequate  con- 
ception, save  alone  those  with  polished  l^reasts 
and  refined  sensibiHties,  who  have  proved  it  bv 


the  test  of  bitter  experience — and  they  can  never 
tell  to  the  world,  though  they  may  not  all  conceal, 
what  its  horrors  are,  for  such  things  are  untold. 

"  But  a  new  year's  midnight,  when  the  ghostly 
spirits  of  the  victims  of  crime  are  permitted  to 
burst  the  cerements  of  the  dead  and  come  forth 
from  their  barred  and  shadowy  realm  of  the 
mystic  unknown,  to  walk  these  dismal  halls  and 
haunt  the  cells  of  their  despoilers  and  their 
murderers  ;  until,  in  fancy,  their  tufted  foot-falls 
may  be  heard  by  ears  of  flesh  and  blood — it  is 
then  that  the  blood  runs  cold,  the  breathing  is 
bated  and  suspended,  and  the  startled  heart  beats 
with  echoing  thuds  that  sound  as  the  measured 
strokes  of  some  mighty  forge-hammer.  No  sto- 
ries of  a  haunted  house,  nor  yet  of  the  traditional 
church-yard,  where  grim  and  menacing  spirits 
are  supposed  to  walk  and  haunt  the  night,  are 
half  so  terrible  to  timid  minds  as  would  be,  and  is, 
this  seeming  reality.  Then  the  minions  of  hell 
that  are  ever  here,  almost  perceptible  to  the 
naked  eye  and  palpable  to  the  touch  of  mortal 
fingers,  mingle  freely  in  the  scenes,  to  work  upon 
the  terror-stricken  minds  of  the  haunted,  after 
their  ghostly  tormentors  have  fled  back  to  their 
futurity-veiled  sphere. 

"  This  is  a  New  Year's  Avatch-meeting,  solus,  to 
a  mind  and  heart  that  have  not  been  polluted  by 
the  contagion  of  debauching  poison,  nor  rendered 
callous  by  self-abandonment  in  the  veritable  ex- 
perience of  a  dungeon  life. 

"It  is  now  dead  midnight;  the  lights  burn 
blue.  The  dying  year,  with  its  hopes  and  de- 
spair, its  anticipations  and  disappointments,  its 
joys  and  sorrows,  its  festivities  and  deaths,  van- 
ishes— now  it  is  gone  forever.  Hark,  list !  It  is 
but  the  mournful  notes  of  the  village  bells,  tolling, 
tolling,  tolling,  their  knell  of  death.  How  they 
startle  and  pierce  the  still  and  icy  air !  • 

"  Farewell,  old  year,  that  has  measured  me 
one  mark  less  on  the  dial  of  time — one  less  of 
sorrow  and  suffering ! 

"  I  am,  in  not  ungrateful  memory, 

"  Lawrence  Pleasington." 


We  have  many  other  letters  written  by  Cloud 
and  Pleasington  and  their  friends,  but  deem  it 
needless  to  transcribe  more  of  them  into  these 


280 


MYSTIC  KOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


pages.  Several  of  these  letters  are  from  Cloud  to 
the  minister,  and  from  the  latter  to  the  former. 

But  Cloud's  last  letter  to  the  good  man  remains 
unanswered.  For  some  strange  and  inexpHcable 
cause,  the  man  of  Grod  abandoned  his  partially- 
reclaimed  charge  to  his  fate. 

This  seems  more  strange  and  unaccountable, 
when  we  come  to  consider  the  sohcitude  which 
the  minister  manifested  for  Cloud  in  his  early 
days  of  suffering,  and  which  continued  long  after 
ihe  relation  was  definitely  established  between 
him  and  Nube  G-arland.  To  the  minister.  Cloud's 
darkest  chapters  were  intimately  known  months 
before  his  last  cheering  letters  were  penned. 
Cloud  grieved  over  the  loss  of  this  friend,  but 
ceased  not  to  treasure  the  precepts  and  assur- 
ances contained  in  his  letters,  nor  to  regard  them 
as  an  anchor  of  faith  and  hope. 


CHAPTER    LXXII. 

THE    FAREWELL. 

•'  Farewell  I  'tis  a  lonely  sound. 
Ana  oftimes  brings  a  sigh  ; 
But  give  to  me  tliat  better  word, 

That  comes  from  the  lieart,  'Good-by,' 
•  Good-by,  good-by,'  will  do  for  the  gay. 

When  Pleasure's  throng  is  nigh. 
But  the  heart  feels  most  when  the  lips  move  not. 
And  the  eyes  speak,  the  gentle  '  Good-by.'  " 

—Old  Song. 

Lawrence  :  "  Well,  Cloud,  my  friend^  I  ob- 
tained leave  for  a  few  moments,  and  a  pass,  to 
run  over  to  say  good-by,  as  I  knew  you  are  not 
under  the  galling  scrutiny  of  the  sleepless  gaze  of 
an  officer ;  and  that,  therefore,  we  could  have  a 
quiet  chat.  To-morrow,  you  know,  the  end  of 
this  will  come  for  me,  after  sixteen  years  and 
seven  months,  besides  the  few  weeks — I  almost 
forg?t  how  long — spent  in  jail. 

"  I  am  soiTy  to  leave  you  here,  so  sorry  that, 
was  such  a  thing  possible,  I  would  take  half  your 
time  upon  myself  in  order  to  have  you  go  away 
with  me  into  the  other  life ;  but,  since  that  can- 
not be,  I  must  leave  you  behind  and  go  out  into 
the  untried  reahties  of  a  new  existence." 

"Cloud:  "Ah!  my  magnanimous  fellow, 
though  you  be  the  only  friend  I  have  Avoaring 
the  stripes,  and  though  I  know  I  shall  miss  the 


little  voiceless  tokens  of  that  true  and  unselfish 
friendship  which  have  often  caused  me  to  repeat 
intuitively  and  aloud  the  lines, 

'  'TIs  death  to  be  parted,  yet  near  thee 
'Tis  woe,  irretrievable  woo,' 

more  than  fancy  can  image  or  words  can  depict, 
yet  from,  the  depths  of  my  soul,  I  rejoice  to  bid 
you  adieu." 

Lawrence:  ''So  would  I  rejoice  to  bid  you 
adieu,  were  you  going  instead  of  staying ;  but 
let  us  not  quarrel  about  the  inevitable.  Moments 
are  too  few  and  precious." 

"  What  of  the  commissions,  with  which  you 
desire  to  entrust  me,  the  first  thing  ?  " 

Cloud  :  "  I  have  a  long  letter  on  tissue-paper, 
put  up  in  two  shoe-sole  shaped  packages  and 
pressed  until  they  are  no  thicker  than  brown 
l^aper.  I  want  you  to  put  one  under  each  false 
sole  in  your  shoes,  and  thus  carry  them  to  Mrs. 
Flowers,  who  will  expect  a  letter  by  your  hand 
and  will,  therefore,  make  such  an  opportunity  for 
you  to  deliver  it  as  suits  her  fancy.  Please  wait 
for  her  to  indicate  this  before  even  intimating  to 
her  that  you  have  a  letter  for  her;  and,  as  to 
others,  keep  your  own  counsel,  as  I  am  unadvised 
as  to  her  pleasure  on  the  subject.  Tliis  is  all, 
Lawrence,  except  to  thank  all  the  good  friends 
for  their  kind  interest  and  charitable  sohcitude 
in  and  for  me ;  and  to  express  to  them  my  regrets 
that  circumstances  over  which  I  exercise  no  con- 
trol, should  have  so  cruelly  precluded  me  from  ac- 
cepting then'  magnanimous  offices  and  friendly 
visits,  so  generously  tendered  to  me." 

Lawrence  :  "  Well,  Garland,  that  shades  all  the 
shrewd  ingenuity  to  pass  out  a  letter  that  I  have 
ever  heard  of  in  the  long  and  varied  catalogue  of 
State  prison  prohfic  and  inventive  expedients.  I 
will  carry  it  and  keep  silent.  I  owe  you  a  letter- 
carrying  debt  noAV  twenty  years  old.  I  shall  faith- 
fully attend  to  your  other  requests. 

"  Col.  Worthington  and  Ogletlii-op,  with  their 
ladies,  were  here  lo  see  me  yesterday,  and  ex- 
pressed their  mortification  at  not  being  able  to 
see  you  when  they  were  so  near  you.  The  old 
gentleman  has  changed  very  little  since  la^st  I  saw 
him.  Oglethrop  is  the  perfect  picture  of  man- 
hood and  health. 


THE  FAREWELL. 


281 


"  It  is  definitely  settled  that  I  am  to  go  to  the 
Southern  seaboard,  to  take  charge  of  an  im- 
portant interest — the  same  port  that  I  wrote  you 
the  note  about  some  time  ago.  Do  you  still  think 
that  we  must  not  correspond  while  you  remain 
here  ?  " 

Cloud  :  "  Oh,  yes,  I  do,  and  decidedly,  for  the 
same  reasons  advanced  before.  This  letter  that 
goes  out  by  you  is  the  last  one  that  I  ^hall  ever 
send  that  does  not  pass  through  the  regular  chan- 
nel. It  does  not  contain  one  contraband  word. 
It  is  merely  something  that  I  do  not  care  to  be 
made  the  subject  of  prison  gossip  just  now;  fori 
know  that  the  letter  would  be  copied  before  it 
Avent  forward.  Our  mutual  friend  has  a  copy  of 
it  to  be  used  in  his  work." 

Pleasington  :  "I  guess  you  are  right.  Cloud.  I 
never  should  have  used  the  forbidden  route  but 
for  the  peculiar  position  in  which  I  was  placed. 
I  have  not  used  it  to  pass  one  word  that  could 
injure  the  prison  or  prejudice  the  interests  of  the 
State." 

Cloud  :  "  Has  Arnold  Noel  never  yet  suspi- 
cioned  your  identity  ?  " 

Pleasington  :  "  Not  in  the  least.  I  have  often 
been  so  near  him,  I  could  have  taken  him  by  the 
throat.  He  never  knew  me  very  well,  and  never 
met  me  after  the  second  year  of  the  war.  Since 
then  time  has  changed  me  so  much  that  few  of 
those  who  then  knew  me  most  intimately  would 
recognize  me  now.  Even  Col.  Worthington  and 
Oglethrop  say  thej'  would  not  have  recognized 
me,  not  though  they  had  been  seeking  me,  while 
Noel  continues  to  appear  about  the  same  image 
as  when  a  boy." 

Cloud:  "Well,  Lawrence,  I  trust  that  you 
may  find  such  repose  and  comfort  of  body,  and 
quiet  and  peace  of  mind  throughout  the  remain- 
der of  your  Hfe,  as  will  soften  and  alleviate  the 
cruel  memories  of  the  past,  to  an  extent  to  ren- 
der existence  even  more  placidly  serene  than  you 
now  dare  to  dream  that  it  will  prove." 

Lawrence:  "  Oh,  well,  G-arland !  I  have  taught 
myself,  resignation  in  all  these  years  of  effort, 
to  bow  in  meekness  before  the  Chastener,  that 
has  enabled  me  to  endure  this,  and  which  I  be- 
lieve will  assist  me  to  continue  to  bear  my  cross 
zmcomplainingly,  and  to  do  my  duty  to  my  race 


in  a  purer  atmosphere,  under  more  congenial 
skies,  amid  surroundings  and  scenes  that  are  less 
diabolical  and  more  brightly  cheering.  Pray  do 
not  forget  me,  nor  to  remember  our  mutual 
pledges.  I  shall  think  of  you,  and  pray  for  you 
every  day,  while  I  await  your  greeting  letter  of 
friendship  and  liberty. 

"  Now,  Garland,  one  changeless  friend  must 
leave  you.  My  blessing  remains  with  you;  and 
may  G-od  bless  and  spare  you  to  your  friends  and 
our  cause  of  usefulness,  in  which,  I  hope,  Ave  may 
meet  again  and  together  work.  So  thus  Ave  must 
part.     Farewell." 

Cloud  :  "  G-od  bless  and  spare  you  to  human- 
ity, Lawrence.  I  will  be  faithful  and  constant  in 
all  things,  and  will  n"fever  forget  you.  My  friend, 
farewell." 


CHAPTER   LXXIIL 

"  faithful  hearts  that  not  forsake." 

And  thus  the  heart  will  break,  yet  brokenly  live  on ; 
Even  as  a  broken  mirror,  which  the  glass 
In  every  fragment  multiiJlies,  and  makes 
A  thousand  images  of  one  that  was. 
The  same  and  still  the  more,  the  more  it  breaks, 
And  thus  the  heart  will  do  which  not  forsakes; 
Living  in  shattered  guise,  and  still,  and  cold. 
And  bloodless,  in  Its  sleepless  sorrow  aches. 
Yet  withers  on  till  all  without  is  old. 
Showing  no  visible  sign,  for-such  things  are  untold." 

— Bykon. 


"Sept.,  1881. 
"  Mrs.  Carrie  V.  Flowers  : 

"  My  best  and  trriest  friend  : 

"  The  intervening  months 
between  the  receipt  of  your  last  sublime  letter 
and  this  moment,  that  I  then  deemed  so  long,  and 
that  appeared  so  far  distant,  have  one  after  an- 
other rolled  past,  and  as  I  to-night  gaze  out  OA^er 
the  wake  of  the  backAvard  track  of  time,  I  fancj^ 
that  it  was  not  more  than  a  week  ago  when  that 
letter  first  gladdened  and  grieved  mine  eye.  Yet 
still,  hoAvever,  the  time  is  here  now  when  my 
promise  to  you  is  due — when  that  sad,  sad  letter, 
of  Avhich  I  have  shuddered  and  dreaded  to  think, 
and  hesitated  so  long  to  commence,  must  be  writ- 
ten. I  no  less  now  dread  the  task  than  at  any 
time  in  the  past — a  task  from  which  I  Avould  gladlj' 


282 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES    OF  THE   BLUE  AND  THE   GREY. 


shrink ;  a  subject  of  which  I  would  a  thousand 
times  over  prefer  never  to  think,  much  less  broach. 
However,  it  is  a  theme  and  duty  to  which  I  am 
fated — am  bound  with  more  than  admantine 
chains.  So,  being  thus  irretreivably  condemned, 
I  will  proceed  to  acquit  myself  of  the  letter  por- 
tion of  the  penalty  by  its  fulfillment. 

"  To  attempt  to  answer  your  letter,  especially 
the  last  one,  with  the  spectral  ghost  of  one  fea- 
ture of  the  subject  of  which  j^our  first  letter  de- 
mands of  me  to  render  an  account,  haunting  my 
mind,  and  causing  a  thrill  of  terror  to  pervade  my 
being,  would  be  more  than  folly — it  would  be 
madness. 

"  Of  the  darkest  chapter  of  my  ignoble  career, 
I  shall  assume  that  you  have  aversion  sufficiently 
authentic  both  to  gratify  the  demands  of  curiosity 
and  to  satisfy  the  sohcitude  of  interested  friend- 
ship. Surely,  this  is  ample  as  to  all  particulars, 
save  that  blank  and  mysterious  missing  .link  be- 
tween the  evening  on  which  I  disappeared  from 
the  '  Future  City,'  and  tlie  day  on  which  I  re- 
appeared at  my  father's  home.  There  my  presence 
was  as  much  a  surprise  to  the  family  and  the 
neighbors,  who  were  there  on  that  occasion,  as 
though  they  had  witnessed  me  rise  up  out  of 
the  ground.  This  is  one  feature  of  that  subject 
that  is  so  painful  and  terrible  to  contemplate 
that  I  have  never  written  one  syllable  upon  it ; 
about. it  I  have  never  breathed  one  word — have 
been  as  silent  as  the  grave;  nor  have  I  dared 
think  of  it  aloud  in  the  presence  of  any  one.  If 
ever  the  most  horrible  of  all  horrors  was  revealed 
to  mortal  man  upon  this  earth,  if  ev.er  the  vision 
of  judgment,  of  death  and  hell,  the  grim-visaged 
terrors  of  their  appearance  to  the  approaching 
spirits  of  the  lost  and  the  damned,  were  a  veri- 
table reality,  divested  of  every  semblance  of  im- 
aginary coloring  and  feature  of  superstitious  fancy, 
that  experience  was  then  mine. 

"  "We  have  all  been  taught  a  divine  maxim, 
that  '  Confession  is  good  for  the  soul' — then  why 
not  for  the  body  and  the  mind  as  well  ?  Im- 
pliciUy  trusting  to  the  efficacy  of  the  doctrine  as 
being  applicable  alike  to  the  one  and  to  the  other, 
I  shall  proceed  to  a  practical  test  of  the  force 
of  the  virtues  of  this  antidote  as  an  operative 
a^ent  to  counteract  the  mortal  malady.     I  shall. 


therefore,  make  to  you  an  honest  confession  of  that 
deep,  dark,  and  long-guarded  secret,  before  taking 
up  any  other  point  of  the  promiscuous  features 
of  information  which  your  letter  demands.  I 
do  this  Avith  a  hope  that  my  mind  will  thereby 
experience  some  relief  from  the  torturing  rack  of 
painful  distress  and  acute  remorse  to  which  it  is 
perpetually  exposed.  Therefore,  without  further 
preliminary  cringing,  I  will  free  my  mind  by 
opening  my  heart  and  laying  bare  to  you  the 
fearful  story  that  lies  therein  concealed. 

"  The  pangs  of  suicide;  the  vision  of  death  and 
beyond  ! 

"  After  swallowing  the  potent  and  venomous 
drug,  there  was  a  strange  sensation  instantane- 
ously creeping  through  my  being.  The  healthful 
currents  of  life  were  being  sapped  and  curdled, 
and  were  becoming  stagnate  and  clogged  and 
dormant  in  their  wonted  channels.  The  heart,  in 
consequence,  labored  heavily  to  perform  its  func- 
tions, but  was  gradually  stifled,  as  the  pure  blood 
which  its  pulsations  expelled  from  the  resei'voir 
of  its  great  fountain-head,  and  started  out  on  its 
vitalizing  course,  flowed, prematurely  back  upon 
its  supplying  source,  as  yet  but  slightly  impreg- 
nated with  the  deadly  bane.  This  was  swiftly 
permeating  the  smaller  branches,  and  there  leav- 
ing its  work  of  destruction  behind  it  complete,  as 
it  proceeded  on  with  unabated  force  to  encroach 
upon  the  heart  itself.  The  great  rotary  pumping- 
engine  of  the  heart  was  rapidly  submerged 
and  flooded  and  disabled;  its  struggles  grew 
feebler  and  more  feeble  still.  Upon  each  failing 
effort,  the.  submerging  currents  rushed  back,  yet 
more  deeply  impregnated  with  that  wasting 
agent  of  death.  Finally,  the  faint  struggles  were 
barely  perceptible,  as  they  steadily  and  ever  con- 
tinued to  decline.  The  fingers  and  the  toes  ting- 
led. The  eye-balls  quivered  in  their  sockets. 
The  muscles  of  the  neck  and  face  twitched  con- 
vulsively. The  head  grew  dizzier  and  dizzier, 
until  it  seemed  that  I  was  on  some  wheel  that 
might  have  been  making  a  million  of  revolutions 
l)er  minute.  There  was  a  roaring  sound  in  the 
ears  resembling  the  thunder  of  a  monster  cataract^ 

"  Now  the  heart  surceased  to  beat.  Then  there 
was  a  moment  of  painful  suspense  not  unlike,  nor 
yet  Avas  it  just  the  same  sensation  as  that  expe- 


FAITHFUL  HEARTS  THAT  NOT  FORSAKE.' 


283 


rienced  in  the  la^t  instant  of  consciousness  when 
passing  under  the  influence  of  chloroform.  The 
ebbing  faculties  of  vitahty  were  yet  able  to  realize 
that  their  annihilation  was  drawing  its  work  rap- 
idly nearer  and  nearer  to  its  final  consummation. 

'•  Then  followed  a  period  of  deeper  blank  be- 
tween this  latter  state  and  a  jjrofoundly  uncon- 
scious sleep,  during  which,  could  the  act  which 
had  produced  it  have  then  been  recalled,  no  men- 
tal anguish,  no  suffering,  no  bereavement,  no  sor- 
row, no  disappointment,  no  misfortune,  no  loss, 
no  shame,  no  fear  of  all  the  combined  terrors  and 
tortures  that  ever  afflicted,  scourged,  tormented, 
slew,  or  consumed  man  upon  this  trouble-stricken 
earth,  could  have  ever  tempted,  induced,  or  di'iven 
me  to  fly  from  them  and  seek  refuge  in  this  ! 

"  But  oh,  my  God  !  even  in  that  horrid  dream 
on  the  very  mystic  borders  of  death,  I  yet  was 
able  to  reaUze  that  it  was  forever  too  late,  for- 
ever past  recalling ;  and  that  I  was  swiftly  pass- 
ing into  the  mysterious  realities-  of  the  great 
Hereafter  and  of  the  terrible  Unknown.  This 
was  the  most  awful  moment  ever  experienced  by 
mortal  mind  or  spirit  ken,  without  the  dreadful 
reality  of  that  infernal  torment  of  which  the 
preacher  sometimes  tells  us  in  startling  words. 

"  Jfow  all  the  ties  of  consciousness,  that  had 
bound  together  the  relations  of  mind  and  nature, 
were  severed;  and  I  passed  into  a  state  far  more 
vivid  than  the  most  impressively  realistic  dream. 
While  thus  enthralled  in  suspense,  aU  the  thread 
of  my  life  unfolded,  and  every  act  thereof,  both 
great  and  small,  passed  in  solemn  array  before  my 
startled  and  wondering  vision.  But  I  could  not 
awake,  as  from  some  horrid  night-mare  dream. 
The  bright  spots  of  life;  the  clean  pages  of  its 
history,  together  with  the  dark,  the  stained,  and 
the  blurred  ones,  continued  to  pass  before  me, 
until  they  came  down  to  this  last  and  final  scene, 
where  all  was  still,  on  one  page  of  black  and  ray- 
less  blank.  This  I  comprehended  to  be  a  token  of 
my  everlasting  doom.  I  seemed  to  feel,  but  as  yet 
vaguely,  that  my  spirit  was  free  and  on  the  bor- 
dering confines  of  the  spirit  world,  or  about  to  fly 
thitherward.  It  seemed  that  separation  had  ac- 
tually taken  place,  and  that  my  poor,  long-suffer- 
ing body  was  left  stark  and  stiff  and  tenantless, 
to  moulder  in  the  unknown  depths  of  that  lone- 


some, subterranean  vault,  while  its  late  tenant 
was  hastening  to  an  existence  which  it  then  ap- 
peared to  reahze  in  conscious  conviction  was  ten 
thousand  times  more  a-vvful  and  terrible  than  it 
has  been  or  ever  can  be  named. 

"From  this  uncertain  state  of  semi-stupefac- 
tion, the  spirit  suddenly  awoke  to  a  keen  sensi- 
bility and  deep  realization  of  its  immortal  force 
of  glowing  penetration.  It  could  survey,  at  will, 
with  its  spirit  eye,  the  most  distant  sphere  of  the 
spirit  world  in  all  stages,  all  states,  all  forms,  and 
in  all  time.  Thus  it  understood  that  its  own  sta- 
tion was  fixed  with  the  hopeless  and  the  damned. 
Though  yet  with  its  clay  tenement  in  the  dark 
vault  of  earth  unflown,  its  sealed  doom  was 
clear,  whither  it  could  discern  the  grim  messen- 
ger coming  swiftly  through  sp£\,ce,  on  the  speedy 
wings  of  thought,  to  guard  it  hence  to  its  home 
of  terror. 

"  Poor  soul !  it  shuddered  and  shrunk  back 
upon  itself,  and  would  have  then  flown  alone  for 
some  blessed  station  of  visible  glory,  but  it  was 
transfixed  and  bound  by  the  magic  spell  of  its 
approaching  master.  It  had  forfeited  those 
bright  realms  of  peace  which  spread  out  before 
its  longing  gaze  in  boundless,  endless  sublimit3^ 

"  There  myriads  upon  myriads  of  numberless 
happy  spirits  appeared  in  tranquil  blissfulness. 
In  semblance  they  were  as  near  as  an  earthly 
picture  of  comparison  can  be  drawn  to  approxi- 
mate the  reality  of  this  vision,  as  I  yet  retain  its 
impression,  which  now  sinks  far  below  its  then 
forcible  perfectness — much  the  same  as  joyous, 
happy  girls  of  meekly  modest  and  innocent 
purity,  whose  hopes  have  never  been  embittered 
by  one  cruel  disappointment,  and  whose  lives 
have  never  been  clouded  by  one  sorrow,  when 
mingling  together  in  some  sociably  pleasing  re- 
union. Thus  appeared  the  perfect  peace,  tran- 
quil contentment,  and  supreme  happiness  of  those 
who  had  not,  like  me,  forfeited  their  inheritance 
to  a  home  in  that  bright  world  of  beatific  glory. 
To  my  spirit's  eye  they  did  not  appear  just  Avhat 
in  fancy  we  have  been  taught  to  picture  angel 
forms;  nor  was  their  wide  and  varied  realms  f  f 
bliss  the  same  as  our  imaged  Heaven.  But  they 
appeared  as  worlds  on  worlds,  each  particular 
orb,  both  visilile  and  invisible  to  soipnce"s  mao-ic 


284 


I^rYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


eye,  in  the  vast  era  and  boundless  expanse  of  the 
starry  plain — being  a  happy  spirit  world  border- 
ing on  limpid  rivers  and  crystal  seas,  upon  the 
opposite  margins  of  which  were  other  worlds, 
until  thus  all  were  together  entwined  in  one  con- 
tinuous and  endless  chain  of  perfect  and  symmet- 
rical beauty.  Those  happy  beings  appeared  in 
form  and  beauty  much  the  same  as  the  most  ex- 
quisite model  of  the  sculptor's  art,  yet  a  thou- 
sand times  more  pleasing  to  the  eye;  and  they 
bore  the  full  bloom  and  deep  imprint  '  of  immor- 
tal youth,'  tliat  had  been,  was,  and  was  to  con- 
tinue to  be,  eternally  changeless,  with  un abatable 
faculties  and  tastes  for  the  fullness  of  enjoyment 
of  the  delicious  pleasures  of  their  benignant  clime, 
and  the  delightful  communion  of  social  inter- 
course and  love,-  which  care,  nor  sorrow,  nor 
pain  can  never  mar. 

"  Their  glorious  realms  of  unalloyable  happi- 
ness appeared  to  be  diversified  into  numberless 
and  perpetually  varying  scenes  of  bliss-promoting 
wonders  and  rapture-inspiring  features,  vrhose 
genial  influences  lived  on  ever  new.  There-were 
shady  groves  and  enchanting  gardens  resplendent 
with  unfading  flowers  and  replete  Avith  immortal 
fruits.  There  were  hill  and  dale  and  valley  and 
plain  decked  in  living  green  and  beauteous 
flowers,  interspersed  ever  and  anon  with  mur- 
muring, musical  streams,  and  rippling  cascades  of 
living  water,  covered  with  groups  and  commu- 
nities and  villas  and  cities  of  their  happy  habi- 
tants, employed  in  many  ways. 

"Beyond  and  above  all  this,  there  appeared  to 
be  wrapped  in  a  mystic  veil  of  cloud  the  angelic 
Heaven,  of  which  we  cherish,  a  vague  conception, 
within  the  thrice  consecrated  precincts  of  which 
was  located  the  throne  of  God,  whence  was 
dispensed  blessings  and  mercy  and  grace,  to  His 
surrounding  dominions. 

"  How  terrible  to  gaze  with  longing  admira- 
tion upon  the  beauties  and  the  glories  of  those 
blessed  abodes  of  the  redeemed  and  happy  spirits, 
and  know  that  their  consoling  peace  is  fortified — 
that  one  is  debarred  from  their  enjoyment  for- 
ever— and  to  realize,  as  I  did  then,  that  the  last 
act  of  life  by  which  the  self-freed  soul  was  liber- 
ated from  its  house  of  clay  was  the  capital  offence 
which  had  incurred  the  liability  to  that  dread 


penalty.  Oh,  that  was  one  trying  moment  of 
indescribable  bitterness  and  supreme  anguish  to 
the  hope-exiled  soul ! 

"  Ah!  but  there  was  yet  one  scene  wanting  to 
complete  the  consummation  of  the  trembling, 
terror-stricken  spirit's  torturing  agony ;  to  sur- 
vey the  waste  howling  realms  of  the  damned  in 
torment — that  horrible  sphere  of  endless  dark- 
ness, blank  and  eternal  despair;  the  awful  home 
of  my  shrinking,  frightened  soul  that  was  about 
to  be  conducted  thitherward  forevermore  to 
dwell.  Here  was  grim-visaged  terror,  the  mere 
vision  of  whose  yet  untried  realities  created, 
each  twinkle  of  an  eye,  deeper  pangs  of  suffer- 
ing than  all  that  I  had  ever  experienced  in  my 
natural  life,  could  it  have  been  combined  into  one 
piercing  pang  and  thrust  at  one  instantaneous 
stroke  of  woe  into  the  mortal  heart.  To  eyes 
and  ears  of  flesh  and  blood,  a  true  picture  and  a 
trj.ie  story  of  the  dread  reality  of  that  terrible 
moment,  could  art's  coloring  paint  or  the  paucity 
of  words  depict  it  as  it  was  then  seen  and  felt 
by  my  crushed  soul's  acute  sensibility,  would  be 
a  sight,  a  theme  of  terrifying  horrors  to  drive 
mankind  to  frenzied  madness.  One  glimpse,  one 
pang  would  suffice  to  stay  any  desperate  hand 
raised  in  armed  strife,  arrayed  against  itself  for 
self-destruction. 

"  That  burning  Hell,  with  its  blue  sulphurous 
flames,  I  did  not  behold ;  yet  worse  than  that,  by 
far,  then  to  my  astounded  vision  was  revealed. 
I  saw  the  lost  and  the  damned  suffering  in  the 
purple  darkness  of  their  eternal  midnight,  in  un- 
numbered forms  and  endless  degrees,  in  their 
worlds  of  chaotic  waste.  They  were  exposed  on 
icy  rocks,  in  boggy  fens,  and  upon  the  crested 
billows  of  raging  seas,  to  the  pelting  storms  and 
the  relentless  lash  of  contending  elements. 
Driven  by  the  waves ;  dashed  upon  the  rocks ; 
caught  up  by  the  whirlwind ;  spun  through  space 
by  the  hurricane;  sitting  pensively  absorbed  in 
silent  despair,  wringing  the  hands ;  rushing  fran- 
tically to  and  fro  in  wild  panic,  as  the  terrified 
passengers  on  a  sinking  ship,  or  moaning  pite- 
ously,  as  the  last  survivor  of  a  family  laid  low 
by  the  fell  plague  in  one  dreadful  night.  Then, 
in  their  stern  realms  of  grim  terrors,  ghastly 
shadows,  woeful     horrors,   unmitigated    despair 


FAITHFUL  HEARTS  THAT  NOT  FORSAKE. 


285 


and  endless  pain,  the  realms  of  bliss,  with  all 
their  alluring  delights  and  fascinating  joys,  burst 
forth,  ever  in  dazzhng  splendors  upon  the  hun- 
gry view  of  the  damned,  causing  them  con- 
tinually to  pine  with  ceaseless  yet  vain  desire. 
Thus,  perpetually  consumed  by  hunger  and 
thirst,  yet  not  able  to  die — powerless  to  cease  to 
be — their  longing  suspense,  their  doom  of  fate,  is 
fixed,  unmeasured  by  years,  uncheered  by  one 
distant  gleam  of  hope. 

"  Such  was  '  that  wide,  that  boundless  prospect ' 
that  then  opened  up  before  my  despairing  soul. 
Oh  Heaven !  how  T  then  longed  to  be  back  in 
my  late  esteemed  intolerable  existence,  with  all 
its  wretchedness  increased  a  thousand  fold.  I 
would  have  flown  from  it  again,  never;  but 
would  rather  have  embraced  it  as  a  boon  of 
bliss. 

"  Now  my  guide  and  guard  from  those  dark 
and  infernal  shores  drew  near,  to  take  charge  of 
my  spirit  and  hasten  it  onward  through  space  to 
its  dread  doom.  But  just  as  the  fiendish  mes- 
senger was  about  to  enter  the  dark  vault's  dismal 
mouth  and  rayless  gloom,  like  a  flash  of  light, 
with  flaming  sword  in  hand,  a  bright  angel  inter- 
cepted his  approach  and  bid  him  stand  at  bay.  • 
The  baffled  fiend  protested  and  urged  his  time- 
honored  right  to  the  forfeited  soul.  The  angel 
rebuked  him  for  thus  hastily  pressing  his  claim 
before  it  was  due,  before  the  spirit  and  nature 
were  fully  parted;  and  informed  him  that  while 
in  law  and  custom  the  parted  soul,  when  free, 
was  his  forfeited  right,  the  Great  Judge  had  in 
mercy  decreed  to  judge  that  soul — had  then  jlis- 
patched  his  swift  and  holy  messenger  to  guard 
it  from  farther  harm,  until  its  final  doom  was 
fixed.  Murmuringly  the  fiend  turned  away  and 
sped  him  back  towards  his  ghostly  realm, 
while  gradually  my  spirit  sunk  back  into  a  state 
of  blank  unconsciousness.  Thus  I  passed  through 
the  sleep  of  death  and  fully  experienced  '  what 
dreams  may  come,'  such  as  are  the  suicide's 
appalling  terror. 

"At  last  I  came  back  to  conscious  life;  but 
for  some  time  I  could  not  realize,  nor  yet  be- 
lieve, that  such  was  true.  When,  finally,  I  did 
comprehend  the  situation,  and  was  well  assured 
that  I  still  lived  in  the  flesh,  I  at  first,  and  for  a 


long  time — I  could  not  tell  how  IcMig,  though  it 
seemed  ages  to  me  then — was  unable  to  move  or 
speak.  I  was  paralyzed  and  stiff"  and  cold ;  and 
a  raging  thirst  seemed  to  be  devouring  me  as  a 
consuming  flame.  My  head  and  Hmbs  ached  as 
though  they  were  ready  to  burst  into  shattered 
fragments.  I  beheved  that  I  was  doomed  to  die 
there,  helplessly. 

"  However,  by  desperate  and  persistently  con- 
tinued efforts,  I  moved,  and  at  length  succeeded 
in  getting  my  hand  to  my  head.  There  was  a 
perceptible  indication  of  moisture  on  my  fore- 
head, which  my  constant  exertions  to  move 
caused  gradually  to  spread,  until,  probably  in 
the  course  of  an  hour,  I  was  perspiring  and  able 
to  rise  to  a  sitting  posture ;  but  it  was  much  like 
Rip  Van  Winkle  rising  from  his  fabled  sleep  of 
twenty  years.  The  popping  of  my  joints  echoed 
lugubriously  sad  through  that  dark  and  terrible 
vault. 

"Sometime  later  I  was  once  more  under  the 
starry  canopy  of  Heaven,  much  refreshed  from 
drinking  some  water  from  a  little  brooklet  and 
washing  my  hand  and  face.  It  was  about  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning.  But  what  morning?  I 
was  unable  to  tell.  I  walked  with  much  diffi- 
culty and  great  pain. 

"  Now  a  crisis  was  upon  me.  I  was  confronted 
by  that  great  and  momentous  problem  and  its 
menacing  question — '  What  are  you  going  to  do  ? ' 
I  was  weak  and  feeble,  and  still  suffering  the 
agonizing  tortures  of  torment.  I  was  in  a 
dilemma  of  irresolution  and  perplexing  doubt, 
while  I  fancied  there  was  a  stern  voice  of  com- 
mand ringing  in  my  ears.  '  Fly !  fly !  from  Nube 
Garland  and  his  irredeemable  curse,  back  to  Gar- 
land Cloud  and  truth  and  duty.' 

"I  had  more  will  to  go  than  inclination  to 
stay.  How  could  I  now  return  to  those  scenes 
and  experiences  from  which  I  had  been  driven 
to  attempt  an  everlasting  flight  ?  Would  not  the 
reproach  of  that  attempt  be  Avorse  to  bear  than 
all  that  had  induced  it  ?  So  far  as  all  the  world 
who  had  ever  known  me  as  Nube  Garland  was 
concerned,  my  relation  would  only  be  the  same 
as  it  would  have  remained  had  I  never  returned 
to  Hfe.  All  the  pangs  of  anguish  and  feelings  of 
disappointment   that  my  rash  act  would  cause  in 


286 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREl. 


the  world,  had  ah-eady  been  most  cruelly  in- 
flicted— past  recalling,  past  cure;  wounds  which 
my  reappearance  would  but  aggravate.  Thus 
influenced,  I  resolved  to  fly;  but  I  had  no  money, 
and  what  to  do  I  could  not  tell. 

"Directly  I  remembered  where  Milton  Land 
had  lived  ten  years  before,  about  forty  miles 
away.  I  was  about  one  mile  from  a  point  on  a 
railroad  leading  to  that  place — a  point  at  which 
an  out-going  freight  train  would  stop  at  a  few 
minutes  past  three  o'clock  in  the  morning.  If  I 
could  catch  that,  and  prevail  on  the  conductor 
to  pass  me  to  Milton  Land's  station,  I  might  there 
obtain  money  to  carry  me  back  to  my  native 
blue  mountains,  where  I  then  dreamed  I 
would  pass  my  remaining  days,  be  they  many  or 
few,  in  almost  hermetical  seclusion,  far  from  the 
seething,  surging  strifes  of  life  in  which  I  had 
suffered  such  sorrow,  endured  so  much  pain. 

"Taking  from  my  pocket  a  large  linen  hand- 
kerchief, and  tying  the  corners  together,  I  then 
.•^lipped  it  tightly  over  the  top  of  my  head,  and 
under  my  chin,  to  form  the  semblance  of  a 
huge  bandage.  This  concealed  my  side  features 
and  covered  my  lower  beard.  This  done,  I  set 
out  to  reach  the  railroad.  Never  in  my  life  have 
I  performed  any  physical  effort  that  was  accom- 
plished with  so  much  difficulty  and  at  the  cost 
of  so  much  bodily  pain. 

"However,  I  reached  the  desired  point  in  time, 
and  the  conductor,  who  happened  to  be  intimately 
acquainted  with  Milton,  passed  me  without  a 
word  of  objection,  and  landed  me  at  my  destina- 
tion before  the  sun  peeped  over  the  neighboring 
hill-tops.  The  conductor  pointed  out  to  me  the 
residence  of  Milton  Land. 

"  I  was  met  at  the  door  by  Milton,  who  never 
would  have  recognized  me.  He  was  loth  to  be- 
lieve at  first  I  was  not  some  imposter,  as  he  had 
been  informed  ten  years  before  that  I  had  com- 
mitted suicide  by  drowning  in  the  Tennessee 
river,  but  that  my  body  had  never  been  found. 
Yet,  however,  I  quickly  satisfied  him  as  to  my 
identity,  and  told  him  that  I  had  been  drugged 
nearly  to  death  at  the  '  Future  City,'  was  thus  left 
penniless ;  and  that  I  had  sought  him  in  my  dire 
extremity  with  a  hope  that  I  could  obtain  assist- 
ance to  enable  me  to  get  to  my  native  land.  This 


he  promptly  assured  me  I  could  have.  Then  he 
conducted  me  into  a  room  in  order  that  I  might 
wash  and  comb  before  meeting  the  family.  He 
left  me  there  alone  for  a  few  minutes. 

"  After  washing,  I  went  to  the  glass  to  comb. 
At  the  first  glimpse  I  started  back  aghast.  My 
hair  and  beard  were  nearly  half  grey,  and  every 
hair  on  my  neck  was  as  white  as  wool.  My  ej'es 
were  sunken,  Avith  great  black  circles  under 
them;  and  my  features  were  contracted  and 
haggard.  With  the  evidence  of  my  missing 
arm  concealed,  I  could  have  M^alked  the  active 
thoroughfares  of  the '  Future  City,'  with  impunity, 
with  no  fear  of  being  recognized. 

"As  to  the  meeting  and  day  spent  with  the 
famil}'— ^just  imagine  it!  That  night  I  bid  them 
adieu  and  took  passage  on  a  mail  train  that  swiftly 
widened  the  distance  between  me  and  the  city 
Avith  which  were  associated  so  many  sadly  bitter 
memories,  and  the  dark  vault  for  seventy-six 
hours  my  tomb. 

"After  I  was  at  my  father's  house  the  first 
evening  and  night,  I  found  that  the  phantom  of 
Garland  Cloud,  which  had  haunted  me  so  many 
years,  was  gone;  but  that  there  was  still,  and 
more  horrible  to  contemplate,  the  ghost  of  Nube 
Garland  with  me,  destined  to  be  and  to  remain 
ever  present. 

"  The  horrors  of  that  sleep  of  death  and  its 
frightful  dreams  weighed  heavily  upon  my  de- 
sponding mind,  creating  pangs  which  my  enfeebled 
frame  was  little  able  to  sustain. 

"  Then,  added  to  this,  was  the  keen  knife  of  re- 
morse, cutting  the  lacerated  mass  and  pulp  of  my 
crushed  heart.  Remorse  for  my  act — that  act  of 
horror  that  had  more  than  miraculously  failed, 
for  the  drug  was  pure  and  of  the  most  potent 
known,  and  had  been  taken  in  the  accurately 
measured  proportion  prescribed  by  science  to 
dispatch  a  man  of  my  natural  strength  and  power- 
ful constitution,  and  it  did  its  work  vrell  and 
finally,  had  not  a  super-human  power  intervened 
and  stayed  its  fatal  influence  before  the  work  of 
destruction  was  complete — and  for  my  commer- 
cial brigandage,  do  you  thinlf?  Ah,  no  ;  but  it 
was  for  the  poor  forsaken  Manonia,  whom  I 
should  never  see  any  more,  that  I  wept ;  and  for 
whom  my  heart  began  to  bleed  ever  again  anew.  I 


FAITHFUL  HEAKTS  THAT  NOT  FOESAKE." 


287 


had  beheld  her  grief,  that  nearly  broke  her  heart; 
and  now  I  could  not  rest  one  moment,  either 
sleeping  or  waking,  for  the  haunting  image  of  her 
pitiful  despair.  She  had  been  devoted  to  me  to 
a  degree  to  rival  anything  I  ever  read  in  the  most 
fabulously  colored  descriptions  of  romanticly  im- 
aged conjugal  aiFection.  She  was,  for  a  time, 
happy;  but  between  her  father's  family  and  I  her 
heart  was  about  equally  divided,  with  my  half 
rather  in  the  preponderance.  When  she  was  with 
me,  temptation  never  assailed  me;  but  her  fre- 
quent and  protracted  visits  to  her  family  proved 
my  bane. 

"Had  she  been  with  me  when  the  emergency 
came  to  force  a  decision,  whether  I  would  aban- 
don my  sinking  craft  of  commerce  and  let  her 
go  down  with  her  over  burthen,  honorably,  or 
buoy  her  up  by  casting  honor  overboard  and 
cahing  to  my  assistance  those  most  disreputable 
of  piratical  sloops.  Deception  and  Crime,  my  ship 
would  have  been  submerged  beneath  the  en- 
croaching and  disastrous  waves  of  misfortune. 
But,  poor  Manonia!  she  was  not  there  with  her 
angehc  influence  to  counteract  and  disarm  the 
power  of  the  Tempter,  whose  slave  I  was  and 
had  been  for  so  many  years,  whenever  I  was 
alone  unguarded  by  some  soul  of  purity  which 
he  dared  not  approach ;  or,  had  she  been  with  me 
in  that  last  great  crisis  of  supreme  trial,  I  had 
never  known  that  sleep  of  death  with  its  dreams 
of  horror. 

"  Could  I  recall  that  step — that  nameless  wrong 
that  Hnked  her  fate  with  the  burden  of  my  curse — 
I  would,  to  have  that  it  had  not  been,  go  back 
again  to  that  sleep  of  death,  as  I  was  when  the 
angel  came,  never  more  to  wake.  Is  this  not 
proof  of  my  remorse  ? 

"  I  struggled  hard,  but  all  in  vain,  to  resist  the 
spell  that  forged  the  links  of  that  fatal  chain  that 
bound  her  to  me,  and  enslaved  her  hopes  in  the 
direful  thraldom  of  a  cruel  despair. 

"  Ah,  my  true  friend,  before  the  charm  of  that 
magic  and  enchanting  spell,  I  was  as  powerless 
to  exercise  my  own  free  will  as  I  was  while 
under  the  baneful  influence  of  that  potent  drug. 
It  has  been,  is,  and  ever  will  be,  a  mystery  too 
deep  for  the  penetration  of  my  dark  mind. 
Some  strange  power,  unrevealed,  decreed — some 


invisible  hand  of  destiny  directed,  that  I  should 
be  her  fell  fatality.  "  Before  her  pure  chain  of 
love  had  bound  me  fast,  your  image,  my  true 
young  heart's  idol— the  first,  the  last,  the  only 
shrine  of  love  upon  which,  in  all  truth  and  sin- 
cerity, all  its  incense,  with  no  reserve,  was  sac- 
rificed, and  but  for  that  fiendish  lie  that  told  me 
how  base  slander's  envenomed  whisper,  that  lied 
so  as  to  seem  true,  had  ahenated  your  good 
friendship  from  me,  for  with  you,  friendship, 
true  friendship,  was  all  that  it  ever  could  have 
been — I  Avould  have  mourned,  and  felt  the  same 
keen  remorse  for  your  sake  that  I  have  known 
for  poor  Manonia  in  her  desolate  lot. 

"  Against  the  spell  that  hnked  my  soul  to  you 
I  fought  long  and  well,  and  was  oft  and  truly 
warned.  Few  are  the  men,  with  ambition's  fire 
glowing  in  their  hearts,  who  would  not  have  a 
fair  angel,  adored  by  seraphs  and  all  the  world, 
for  a  friend,  though  he  knew  that  nearer  he 
could  never  be  than  for  distant,  unseen  smiles 
and  far-sent  messages  of  approbation  to  cheer 
him  on  with  tireless  courage  to  stem  the  oppos- 
ing tides  and  brave  the  adverse  storms  that 
would  dispute  his  daring  course.  I  was  that 
aspirant,  you  the  angel,  then  when  you  proffered 
friendship  I  embraced  it  with  a  secret  vow,  a 
mental  oath,  that  beyond  that  safe  line  of  pro- 
priety's bounds  I  Avould  never  attempt,  nor  seek 
to  go,  nor  dream  of  going. 

"My  unwhispered  plans  of  ambition  to  rise 
were  deeply  formed  before  my  proud  young 
heart  bounded,  with  one  wild  and  enthusiastic 
thrill,  when  first  I  gazed  upon  the  tented  field. 
But  I  realized  the  want  of  an  inspiration,  and 
that  your  name  proved  to  be  to  me,  a  name 
Avhich  I  learned  to  cherish  with  holy  reverence, 
and  to  consecrate  as  my  guiding  star  and  my 
consoling  angel,  without  one  selfish  thought  or  one 
future  hope,  save  such  as  were  far  away  removed 
beyond  an  earthly  love,  the  same  as  I  do  now. 
Had  I  never  met  you  under  the  mystic  influence 
of  that  cave-guarded  spring,  or  had  you  then  met 
me  more  coldly  formal,  and  proved  afterwards 
less  warmly  friendly,  my  sentiments  had  ever  re- 
mained unchanged;  I  had  never  dreamed  that 
fatal  dream  of  love,  for  I  trembled  when  I 
thought  of  the  pangs  of  a  hopeless  love. 


288 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES   OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


"  When  that  decoy  letter,  that  sent  me  on  the 
wild  and  tempestuous  voyage  around  the  shores 
of  death  and  hell,  reached  me,  could  I  then  but 
have  known  that  your  true  friendship  still  re- 
mained unshaken,  I  would  have  returned,  defied 
all  their  reptile  crew,  faced  the  whole  world,  and 
confessed  to  you  as  I  confess  now.  But  this  was  not 
to  be  ;  upon  it  rested  the  interdiction  of  Fate,  and 
your  guardian  angel  watched  over  you  and 
shielded  'The  Angel  of  Consolation'  from  all 
harm,  and  gave  to  you  the  purest  and  the  truest 
Christian  man  that  I  ever  knew.  So,  thus,  were 
you  doubly  blessed. 

"  How  truly  well  all  ended,  and  would  be  now, 
had  not  that  hapless  dove,  the  forlorn  Manonia, 
been  draAvn  upon  the  stage  as  an  actress,  to 
perform  the  saddest  role  in  the  sadly  cruel 
scenes. 

"  After  my  return,  I  spent  one  night  in  that 
town  where  once  you  dwelt,  where  we  first  met 
and  last  parted. 

"  In  the  early  summer  morning,  before  the  sun 
rose,  I  walked  over  the  well-remembered  path- 
way to  the  cave  spring ;  looked  around  and 
thought  backwards  to  another  morning  in  May, 
long  years  ago.  The  limpid  spring,  the  arching 
of  the  cave,  the  moss-covered  spring-house,  the 
venerable  shade-tree,  and  the  gravelly  walk  up 
the  gently  sloping  decUvity  to  the  mansion,  were 
there  unchanged  by  time,  but  Carrie  Harman 
was  nowhere  to  be  seen.  Then  I  walked  pen- 
sively up  to  the  stile,  and  sat  down  upon  it, 
where  you  once  sat  by  my  side,  when  you  would 
not  let  me  sing  some  lines  of  that  pathetic  song, 
'  I  am  Sitting  on  the  Stile  Mary,'  as  I  wanted  to 
transpose  them ;  yet  oh !  how  prophetic  they 
were.  This  last  morning  I  sang  alone,  in  a  hum- 
ming, husky  voice  : 

'  I  am  sitting  on  tlie  stile,  Carrie, 

Where  we  sat  side  by  side 
One  bright  May  morning  long  ago. 

When  you  were  my  joy  and  pride. 
The  corn  was  springing  fresh  and  green, 

The  lark  sang  loud  and  high, 
The  red  was  on  your  lip,  Carrie, 

The  love-light  In  your  eye.' 

"  I  could  go  no  farther.  I  looked  over  at  the 
closed  windows  of  the  deserted  mansion,  and  of 
the  parlor  where  last  I  lightly,  and  with  a  hope, 


bade  you  good-night.  '  The  graveyard '  did  not 
lie  between,  Carrie,'  but  there  was  one  lonely, 
neglected,  unknown  grave  there,  and  to  bow  in 
meekness  at  its  shrine  I  had  made  a  pilgrimage. 
It  was  '  The  grave  of  my  Jwjjes.' 

*  *  *      ■  * 

"  Your  grateful,  yet  unworthy  friend, 

"  Garland  Cloud." 
Half  of  this  letter  is  omitted,  as  the  answer 
indicates  its  nature. 

" Square,  New  York,  Jan.,  1882. 

"CoL.  Garland  Cloud: 

''My  unhappy  and  much  pitied  friend : 

"  Your  comiDassion-eliciting.  heartrending,  soul- 
stirring  letter,  by  the  friendly  hand  of  our 
mutual  and  esteemed  friend,  Major  Pleasington, 
has  been  read  and  re-read,  again  and  again,  with 
feelings  of  mingled  sorrow,  pity  and  awe.  Who 
lives,  with  heart  and  soul  so  dead,  as  to  be  un- 
moved by  that  letter  ? 

"  Of  that  terrible  experience  in  the  closing 
scene  of  your  relation  to  Nube  Garland,  which 
terminated  your  career  and  residence  in  the 
'  Future  City,'  I  care  to  say  but  little — the  less 
the  better ;  because  nothing  could  be  so  appro- 
priate, in  the  presence  of  such  a  frightful  and 
horrible  subject  as  silent  awe. 

"  I  am  truly  gratified  to  know  that  it  has  been 
the  means  of  effectually  curing  you  of  that  bane- 
ful pYoneness  to  commit  suicide,  with  which  your 
mind  had  been  so  long  and  so  sadly  infected ; 
that  this  distemper  has  been  thereby  so  thor- 
oughly eradicated  that  you  have  never  since  even 
dreamed  of  self-destruction,  except  with  a  shock- 
ing thrill  of  inexpressible  horror  that  drove  you 
yet  farther  away  from  this  distressing  danger. 
Also,  let  me  say  that  I  am,  furthermore,  thankful 
that  your  present  experience  has  cured  you  of 
that  fatal  and  erroneous  principle  that  caused 
you  to  reason  that  to  commit  a  wrong  with  pure 
motives,  designed  to  promote  a  good  cause  that 
would  directly  benefit  many  thousands  of  the 
laboring  poor  or  produce  good,  was  not  a  crime. 
I  rejoice  that  you  take  the  view  of  it  that  you  do; 
that  your  fearful  penalty  was  necessary  as  the 
only  remedy  that  would  have  fully  effected  this 


FAITHFUL  HEARTS  THAT  NOT  FORSAKE. 


289 


much-to-be-desired  result ;  and  that,  therefore, 
you  regard  those  two  appalUng  experiences  as 
being  the  chief  and  only  blessing  that  you  have  re- 
ceived since  you  first  strayed  from  the  path  of  true 
honor.  Thus  they  must  be,  as  they  have  set  you 
back  in  it  again,  freed  from  the  galling  slavery 
into  which  the  spell — that  fatal  spell  of  the  magic 
mask — had  plunged  and  there  held  you  bound. 
Now  you  are  a  wiser  and  maj^  be  a  better  man. 

"I  now  have  al)iding  faith  and  boundless  con- 
fidence in  your  future  career,  believing  that  you 
are  yet  destined  to  be  the  agent  and  instrument 
through  and  with  whom  the  Divine  benefactor  of 
mankind  designs  to  dispense  inestimable  tem- 
poral blessings  upon  the  human  race,  by  inspiring 
your  purposes  and  directing  your  efforts  so  that 
they  will  become  the  means  of  saving  many 
thousands  from  a  career  of  crime,  and  their  near 
ones  and  their  dear  ones  from  the  cruel  jjangs 
wrought  by  the  criminal's  disgraceful  ruin. 

"  Throughout  the  wild  vicissitudes  of  your 
strangely  checkered  career,  I  can  trace  the  finger 
of  a  mysterious  Destiny,  guiding  you  from  stage 
to  stage,  through  scene  after  scene,  as  he  brought 
you  on  to  this  final  point  of  preparation  for  his 
great  work,  else  why  or  how  has  all  this  been  ? 
What  you  designed — desired,  was  not  to  be ;  and 
what  you  dreamed  not  of,  has  been — is  yours. 

"  Viewing  the  situation  from  your  standpoint, 
that  you' are  a  hopeless  outcast  and  a  friendless 
exile  from  the  benignant  atmosphere  of  the  only 
social  sphere  in  which  you  would  dream  of  at- 
tempting to  exist,  and  which  will,  therefore, 
doom  you  to  a  lonely  life  of  cheerless  desolation, 
I  can  but  stand,  as  it  were,  transfixed  Avith  ad- 
miration at  beholding  the  meek  resignation  and 
imselfish  courage  with  which  you  devote  your 
life  to  the  cause  of  that  social  world  in  which  you 
rre  unlikely  to  find,  for  yourself,  much  benevo- 
lence grafted  on  charity,  and  Avhere  you  may 
expect  to  meet  small  personal  encouragement. 

"  Long  years  ago,  when  our  bright  Southern 
skies  were  overcast  with  darkly  portentious 
gloom,  and  Dixie's  children  of  the  mountain  and 
the  vale  from  day  to  day,  in  trembling  suspense, 
whispered  with  white  lips,  '  The  foe — they  come, 
they  come ! '  I  admired  the  youthful,  mountain 
soldier-boy.  Garland  Cloud,  for  his  unselfish  de- 


votion to  those  who  had  ill-treated  liiiu;.and  for 
his  temperate  life  of  purity,  that  the  corruptions 
of  the  camp  could  not  infect. 

"  Then,  you  confess  to  having  been  an  ambi- 
tious aspirant  to  have  entwined  upon  your  youth- 
ful brow  the  trophied  laurels  of  cruel  war,  man's 
wasting  scourge — that  universal  and  destructive 
pestilence — and  to  having  enshrined  me  as  an 
inspiration  in  your  proud  heart.  It  Avas  a  pleasing 
duty  with  me  to  cheer  you  on. 

"  Now,  again,  with  your  pursuing  odium  of  the 
past,  and  crushing  ignominy  of  the  present,  I  ad- 
mire you — and  more,  a  thousand  times,  with  no 
springing  hope  of  selfishness  as  then  enflamed 
my  young  and  romantic  heart,  but  with  a  nobler, 
higher'  hope  for  the  human  weal  of  all  hearts — 
Garland  Cloud,  regenerated  and  redeemed  ;  ma- 
tured in  years;  ripe  with  knowledge  acquired 
from  lessons  taught  in  Experience's  cruel  school; 
a  stern  veteran  and  courageous  soldier,  brandish- 
ing in  bold  defiance  the  unsheathed  sword  clrawn 
in  a  far  more  glorious  war  against  the  enemy  of 
all  mankind,  that  monster  enemy — Crime  ! 

"  Was  I  worthy,  in  that  other  wasting  war,  to 
be  your  inspiration,  I  am  a  thousand  times  more 
Avorthy  to  be  so  now.  Then,  in  this  long  struggle 
in  that  dark  hour  that  may  be  coming  on,  let  me 
be  your  inspiring  and  consoling  friend.  I  speak 
now  of  your  work — the  duty  of  your  life.  I  am 
yet  to  speak  of  yourself,  and  life  for  yourself 
alone. 

"As  to  the  cureless  wrongs  of  your  lost  and 
much-regretted  Manonia,  I  am  unable  to  see  how 
you  can  do  better  than  to  let  them  remain  just  as 
they  Avould  have  been  had  you  never  awoke 
from  that  horrible  sleep  of  death,  except  that  in 
the  future  you  may  now  contribute  whatever 
you  can  towards  her  support  and  temporal  com- 
fort ;  because,  for  her,  mental  remedy  you  have 
none.  Evidently,  it  would  be  worse  than  mad- 
ness, under  the  circumstances  now  existing,  for. 
you  to  think  of  attempting  to  return  and  live  with 
her  people.  It  would  be,  assuming  that  the  last 
lingering  spark  of  her  affection  for  you  has  not 
been  wholly  extinguished,  a  cruelty  to  tear  her 
away  from  her  family  again,  almost  as  bad  as  the 
other  wrongs  which  she  has  suffered,  even  grant- 
mg  that  she  would  consent  to  such  an  arrange- 


290 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


merit.  This  is  highly  improbable ;  for  now  she, 
doubtless,  hates  you  as  cordially  as  she  once  loved 
3'ou  passionately,  and  is,  most  likely,  divorced,  if 
not  married  again. 

"  I  think  her  deplorable  and  pitiful  lot  is  but 
the  natural  consequence  and  penalty  resulting 
from  the  most  indiscreet  imprudence  on  her  part 
and  that  of  her  family.  Had  she  maintained  to- 
wards you  that  retiring  reserve  and  caution 
that  should  always  be  meted  out  to  unvouched- 
for  strangers  by  all  ladies;  or,  even  before  making 
the  final  leap  into  the  darkness,  had  lier  family 
done  what  custom  inexorably  demand  that  they 
should  have  done — called  on  you  for  references, 
from  whom  your  credentials  could  be  obtained, 
you  would  have  never  married  her.  You  should 
not,  however,  have  been  induced  to  marry  her. 
Wliile  censuring  her  imprudence,  I  am  not  ex- 
cusing you.  I  noted  in  your  letter  that  you 
actually  reproached  me  for  the  extreme  warmth 
with  *which  I  manifested  my  friendship  to  you, 
even  after  our  long-continued  and  most  intimate 
relations.  Certainly,  Manonia  was  no  less  retiring. 

"Now,  it  becomes  me  to  make  my  confession 
to  you — to  do  which  I  am  compelled  to  repeat 
something  of  the  story  of  the  past  which  I  have 
never  told  save  to  myself  alone,  but  to  myself  so 
oft  that  it  will  be  repeating  to  tell  it  to  you.  But 
in  reflecting  upon  this  theme  the  lines  from  our 
once  mutually  admired  'Poet  of  the  passions,'  and, 
I  doubt  not,  now  thrice  in  harmony  with  your 
emotions,  involuntarily  rush  into  my  mind : 

'  Since  my  young  days  of  passion,  joy  or  pain, 
Perchance  my  heart  and  harp  have  lost  a  string, 
And  both  may  jar.' 

"  And  thus  out  of  time,  the  discord  of  my  story 
must  grate  harshly  in  contrast  with  the  present 
situation,  to  which  it  bears  a  distant  relation. 

"My  mterest  in  G-arland  Cloud,  after  the  senti- 
ments of  gratitude  which  sprung  from  the  depths 
of  pure,  sisterly  love,  were  selfish.  From  grati- 
tude the  gradations  upward  can  be  ascended  with 
rapid  facility,  and  the  steps  are  few  to  the  highest 
emotions  and  the  purest  sentiment  of  the  human 
heart — that  of  the  most  intensified  love. 

"  When  I  received  definite  reports  from  the 
army  as  to  how  the  young  gentlemen  of  my 
own  social  class  were  utterly  failing  to  stand  the 


moral,  crucible  test  to  which  they  were  subjected 
in  camp  hfe,  and  drinking,  gambhng,  and  other- 
wise conducting  themselves  in  an  ungentlemanly 
manner,  I  experienced  a  feeling  of  inexpressible 
disappointment,  because,  from  this  class  I  had 
been  educated  to  understand  that  I  was  to  draw 
my  prize  in  the  lottery  of  life. 

"  Stories  of  Garland  Cloud's  temperate  life  and 
unselfish  devotion  as  a  soldier,  both  to  his  country 
and  his  unkind  aristocratic  comrades,  constantly 
reached  me ;  and  coming,  as  they  did  come,  from 
those  companions  themselves,  greatly  enhanced 
these  qualities  and  acts  in  my  estimation.  I  de- 
cided in  my  own  mind,  that  there  was  a  young 
man  in  the  lowest  ranks  of  the  army  that  would 
outstrip  all  of  his  comrades,  with  their  greater 
advantages  of  education,  and  the  powerful  influ- 
ence of  wealthy  and  ofiicial  friends  against  him, 
alone  by  his  own  personal  exertions,  unaided  and 
unbefriended ;  and,  though  belonging  to  a  lower 
sphere  of  life,  that  in  moral  character  and  natural 
talents  he  was  the  superior  of  any  one  of  my  per- 
sonal young  friends  in  the  army,  my  own  dear 
and  idolized  brother  not  excepted.  From  the 
moment  that  this  conviction  became  positively 
fixed  in  my  mind,  I  resolved  that  he  should  be 
the  prize  for  me  in  the  lottery  of  life,  unless  the 
blood  of  his  pure  young  heart  was  sacrificed  on 
the  altar  of  his  country.  From  that  wild  Decem- 
ber day,  until  that  evening  of  your  last  good- 
night, every  thought,  every  action  of  my  life,  that 
bore  the  most  distant  relation  to  you,  was  aimed 
to  tend  to  promote  the  progress,  or  to  hasten  the 
consummation  of  that  result.  I  dreamed  and 
deemed  that  it  would  be  an  easy  conquest,  a 
struggle  in  which  you  would,  without  opposition, 
surrender  at  discretion.  Alas!  how  soon  and 
how  painfully  I  learned  my  mistake  I 

"  I  wrote  you  letters  couched  in  such  warmly 
expressed  terms  as  to  be  nothing  more  nor  less 
than  advances,  at  which  my  maidenly  pride 
blushed,  and  against  which  my  true  woman's 
nature  revolted.  Then  I  waited  on  tip-toe  of 
expectation  for  the  reply,  after  mailing  one  after 
another  of  my  numerous  and  often  voluminous 
letters,  containing  exhaustive  reports  of  the  Avork 
in  which  I  was  engaged,  but  which,  even  as  to 
this  feature,  were  simply  love-letters.     Your  re- 


"FAITHFUL  HEARTS  THAT  NOT  FORSAKE. 


291 


plies  were  always  tardy,  aud  thus  in  ill-harmony 
with  the  anxiety  of  my  watching  heart.  Then, 
when  at  last  they  did  come — cruel  things  that  they 
were — in  the  studied  reserve  of  your  guarded  cold- 
ness I  was  unable  to  find  just  one  little  word  of 
encouragement  for  which  my  hungry,  thirsty 
heart  was  pining,  whose  expressive  fOrce  was  not 
so  modified  by  some  qualifying  term  as  to^destroy 
all  possibility  of  placing  upon  it  the  least  sem- 
blance of  a  favorable  construction.  As  I  read  these 
letters,  I  could  feel  the  sensation  of  an  icy  tre- 
mor creeping  through  my  veins  and  penetrating 
to  my  heart,  mingled  with  provoking  despair.  I 
was  baffled  and  foiled. 

"  Then,  finally,  I  concluded  that  you  must  be 
engaged  to  some  mountain  beauty ;  for  methought 
that  a  mountain  rose  would  be  more  enticingly 
preferable  than  a  lily  of  the  valley,  especially  to 
a  mountain  boy ;  because,  if  otherwise,  I  could 
not  dream  that  you  could  be  indifferent  to  that 
then  self-esteemed,  treasured  jewel,  Carrie  Har- 
man,  and  I  wept — and  wept  most  bitterly.  The 
thought  never  once  entered  my  head,  I  was  so 
honestly  sincere  and  so  intensely  in  earnest,  that 
all  this  time  you  were  dreading  and  shunning  a 
coquettish  flirtation — something  of  which  I  was 
as  incapable  of  being  guilty,  and  which  was  as 
foreign  to  my  nature,  as  the  most  degrading  vices. 
"  After  long  years  of  waiting,  when  at  last  we 
met,  my  woman's  heart  s6on  discerned  that 
yours,  though  distant  and  apparently  indifferent 
and  cold,  could  be.  won.  When  you  came  to  the 
point  of  declarmg  your  love,  it  was  then  that  I 
experienced  the  ecstacies  of  success,  of  a  crown- 
ing triumph,  which,  in  that  glad  hour,  I  thought 
compensated  for  aU  the  cruel  anxiety  and  bitter 
disappointments  of  the  past.  Ah !  but  these  were 
ecstacies  of  bliss  too  fierce — too  fierce  to  last. 

"You  bade  me  good-night  for  evermore,  with 
my  heart  a  stranger  to  you,  and  its  sentiments 
strugghng  so  hard  to  be  free  that  I  could  scarcely 
stifle  them.  Had  I  then  confessed  as  I  do  now  !— 
The  sad,  sad  hues  m  your  old  song  are  appropriate 
here : 

'And  what  we  might  have  been,  Lorena, 
Had  but  our  lovings  prospered  well ! ' 

"  But  they  were  doomed  by  the  stern  and  mer- 
ciless interdiction  of  Fate. 


"  Oh,  my  Grod  I  that  I  could  be  spared  the  mem- 
ory, much  more  the  repetition,  of  another  syllable 
of  this  story.  Your  regretted  Manonia,  nor  any 
other  woman  who  was  a  wife,  never  mourned  more 
bitterly  than  I  mourned.  Oh!  cruel,  cruel  man 
that  you  were,  in  order  to  escape  slander's  venom- 
ously pointed  dagger,  to  wring  a  heart  so  truly 
yours,  and  Wight  the  one  fond  hope  of  a  long- 
suffering  life — that  had  suffered  for  you  alone! 
Had  you  then  known  my  heart,  I  never  could 
have  forgiven  you. 

"  After  my  fufl  two  years  of  mourning  and  re- 
tirement from  society,  the  question  of  marry- 
ing was  a  bitter  one.  I  looked  upon  the  clause 
of  a  letter — a  farewell  letter — you  wrote  to  your 
fathei',  as  a  positive  will  that  I  should  marry 
Jesse  Flowers;  and  that  you  designed  to  make  me 
the  executrix  of  that  will,  and  I  married — devoted 
my  life  as  a  sacrifice  upon  the  altar  of  duty.  It 
was,  on  my  part,  but  meekly  bowing  in  resigna- 
tion at  the  shrine  of  duty ;  then,  farther  than  this, 
my  heart — poor,  crushed  and  mangled  heart — was 
not  in  it.  Jesse  knew  this ;  I  told  him  that,  had 
you  remained,  I  should  have  been  your  wife. 

"  But  1  have  since  taught  myself  loving  devo- 
tion, and  am  as  happy  as  any  one  can  be  in  a  second 
love,  after  the  heart  has  once  bled ;  and  here  the 
lines  of  our  poet  come  again : 
•  Oh !  thyself  deceive  not ; 

Love  may  sink  by  slow  decay; 
But  by  sudden  wrench  believe  not, 

Hearts  may  thus  be  torn  away. 
'  Still  thine  own  its  life  retaineth; 

Still  must  mine,  though  bleeding,  beat; 
And  the  undying  thought  which  paineth, 

Is  that  we  no  more  may  meet.' 

"Now,  as  to  your  future:  I  admire  your  res- 
olution to  start  the  new  life  on  the  foundation 
laid  in  prison,  and  commend  your  desire  to  prove 
to  the  world  what  is  possible  for  fallen  men  to 
do.  But  I  do  not  think  you  are  right  in  declining 
to  accept  assistance  from  true  friends,  who  are 
so  anxious  to  pay  you  something  on  their  great 
debt  of  gratitude.  If  you  think  that  it  wiU  be 
too  painful  to  call  at  the  house,  pray  see  the  men 
m  business. 

"Now,  my  friend,  one  last  request:  All  the 
woman's  heart  that  I  have  is  wholly  and  truly 
devoted  to  Jesse  Flowers.     But  I  have  a  sister's 


292 


IVIYSTIC  ROaiANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


heart  and  a  sister's  boundless  love — half  of  these 
are  yours. 

"  When  I  look  at  my  dear  brother,  in  his  su- 
preme happiness  with  his  mountain  Rose,  and 
think  that  but  for  you,  a  poor,  all  but  friendless 
prisoner,  languishing  all  these  long  and  bitter 
wintry  nights  in  the  murky  damp  of  a  granite 
tomb,  his  bones  would  now  be  bleaching  or 
mouldering  to  dust  on  the  banks  of  the  Potomac, 
I  forget  that  you  have  ever  been  Nube  Garland, 
or  that  there  are  crime  stains  on  the  solitary 
hand — stains  that  I  would  wash  away  in  briny 
tears — and  say,  '  He  is  my  btiotheb  I '  Yes, 
Garland,  I  am  your  sister ;  and  a  sister's  tender 
sohcitude  and  pure  love  shall  be  yours,  the  same 
as  Edgar's.  Think  of  me,  then,  please,  and  write 
to  me  when  you  are  once  more  on  the  great  sea 
of  life,  as  you  do  of  and  to  your  own  little  sister 
away  down  j^onder  in  *  The  city  by  the  Southern 
sea,'  and  I  will  write  to  you ;  advise ;  cheer  you 
onward ;  help  you  every  way  I  can. 

"Be  true,  be  good,  be  constant  to  your 
purposes,  and  live  the  remainder  of  your  cheer- 
less, sorrowful  days,  for  the  good  of  your  race, 
and  for  yourself  in  the  great  Hereafter.  God 
bless  you,  my  poor  brother ;  I  shall  think  of  and 
pray  for  you  every  night.  Do  not,  I  entreat 
you,  do  not  forget 

"Your  devoted  sister-friend, 

"  Carrie  Y.  Flowers." 


CHAPTER  LXXTY. 

THE    ATONEMENT    OFFERING. 

"I,  who  have  sinned,  and  suffered  for  my  sin, 

A  wanderer  far  from  hope  forever  now, 
A  life  whose  dirge  will  be,  '  It  might  have  been !  ' 

Bolore  thy  altar,  Oh  my  country,  bow. 
I  watch  the  suns  of  others  rise  and  set, 

I  know  that  mine  has  set  for  evermore ; 
But  this  I  give  thee ;  what  remaineth  yet 

Of  future  unto  me,  whate'er  its  store, 
Labor,  life  itself,  is  thine  till  life  is  o'er." 

— M.  A.  Billings. 

With  the  term  "atonement"  are  associated 
both  the  beautiful  and  the  terrible.  The  beauti- 
ful obtains  when  the  offering  is  a  free-will  one, 
joyously  made,  and  secures  the  full  and  perfect 
blessing  of  forgiveness  as  its  reward.     The  ter- 


rible is  shadowed  forth  to  startle  reflective  con- 
templation when  the  atonement  is  compulsory 
and  wreaked  in  the  horrible  semblance  of  unmiti- 
gated vengeance. 

About  the  earliest  account  we  recall  of  "atone- 
ment offerings,"  made  with  the  free  will,  bears 
close  relevancy  to  the  immediate  exiles  from  the 
Garden  of  Eden — their  "  Lost  Paradise."  Almost 
as  ancient,  also,  is  the  idea  of  "  atonement "  in 
theJ;ypical  form  of  vengeance,  often  unrighteously 
Avreaked,  as  in  the  tragic  case  of  Abel.  But  such 
cases  as  this  can  hardly  be  classed  under  that 
head^  To  the  punishment  of  crime  does  the 
term,  thus  qualified,  more  appropriately  apply. 

In  this  guise  we  last  beheld  Garland  Cloud,  the 
erratic  wanderer,  shuddering  at  the  uninviting 
prospect  of  his  unpromising  future. 

Now,  once  more  we  take  up  the  thread  of  his 
story.  We  find  him  again  embarked  on  the 
voyage  of  the  "  new  hfe."  As  he  met  and  faced 
death  so  many  times  in  the  early  years  of  his 
first  voyage,  now  does  he  meet  the  world  and 
face  the  stern  behests  of  duty  with  unfaltering 
courage.  The  high  standard  of  moral  courage 
which  he  imaged  in  the  secluded  solitude  of  his 
doomed  atonement's  shadows,  has  proved  more 
than  a  dream — a  mere  mythical  delusion.  That 
courage  is  his.  Strengthened  by  it,  he  dares  to 
speak  and  battle  for  the  right.  Far  more  has  he 
accomplished  Avithin  the  pale  of  the  first  year 
than  he  had  any  right  to  anticipate  that  he  might 
accompUsh  in  less  than  five  years.  Without  the 
slightest  modification  or  abatement,  he  has  re- 
deemed his  pledges  in  every  direction — he  con- 
tinues to  redeem  them  every  day  of  his  life. 

Through  the  press  has  his  poignant  phrases  as- 
sailed crime,  as  no  other  erring  man  of  the  age 
has  ever  before  openly  and  defiantly  arrayed 
himself  on  the  side  and  in  the  suffering  interests 
of  society,  after  he  has  paid  a  legal  atonement.' 

From  his  letters  transcribed  herein  some  idea 
may  be  formed  of  the  nature  of  his  articles  made 
public.  More  than  this,  too,  he  did :  he  went  on- 
to the  platform,  before  large  audiences,  as  a  free 
lecturer  in  the  interest  of  society.  Thus  he 
tendered  his  "  Atonement  offering."  From  notes 
of  one  of  these  lectures  we  are  able  to  make 
some  extracts,  such  as  might  interest  many  per- 


THE  ATONEMENT  OFFEEING. 


293 


sons — lover.*  of  tlie  ti'ue  and  the  riglit.    He  said ; 

"  I  stand  in  your  presence,  this  evening,  in  the 
semblance  of  an  object  of  warning,  to  address 
you  on  the  grand  problems  of  ^human  life — Peace 
and  Happiness  in  this  world.  Beyond  this,  my 
province  as  a  teacher  does  not  extend. 

"  I  stand  here  aghast  at  the  bare  contemplation 
of  my  descent  from  your  sphere  of  blissfulness, 
where  ebb  and  flow  the  eternal  springs  of  hope, 
down  the  yawning  abyss  to  the  isolated  bog  of 
despair — dangers  and  penalties  against  which  it 
becomes  my  hapless  duty  to  warn  you. 

"  Between  your  sphere  and  mine  there  seems 
to  roll  a  fathomless  and  an  impassable  gulf,  at 
least  to  me.  You  might  not  pass  it  without  im- 
periling that  thrice-blessed  birthright,  which  yet 
is  yours  to  enjoy,  to  cherish,  to  treasure  as  the 
most  sacred  and  priceless  jewel  in  this  world; 
so  precious  that,  after  it  has  once  been  lost,  all 
the  gold  of  Ophir,  and  all  the  diamonds  of  Gol- 
conda,  would  not  suffice  to  restore  it  again. 

"  Oh,  young  people !  those  of  you  whose  hearts 
are  yet  buoyant  with  youtliful  hope,  I  am  here 
to  talk  to  you.  I  still  cling  to  one  link  of  the 
broken  chain — that  tie  which  once  bound  me  to 
the  past,  and  yet  keeps  ahve  in  my  heart  one 
quenchless  spark  of  reverence  for  the  true  and 
the  right,  now  cherished  as  sacred,  in  memory  of 
'  the  loved  and  the  lost.'  Against  this  fate  I  earn- 
estly desire  to  warn  you. 

"  Nothing  else  could  induce  me  to  assume  this 
painful  responsibility,  and  to  endure  the  ordeal  of 
trial  which  it  imposes.  Oh,  that  I  could  imprint 
upon  each  young  heart,  now  under  the  sound  of 
my  voice,  impressions  of  my  story,  so  they  might 
there  remain  in  deathless  memory  !* 

"  Shudderingly,  I  glance  along  my  backward 
track,  so  thickly  strewn  with  wrecks  of  hope, 
reeking  in  the  groaning  blood  of  aching  hearts, 
until,  far  beyond  all  these  ruins  and  all  this  woe, 
I  behold  that  young  summer  of  my  youth,  as  I 
then  stood  on  the  same  plane  of  life  where  your 
stations  are  now.  My  brow  was  then  wreathed 
with,  hopeful  honor.  Courageously  I  gazed  up 
the  slippery  steep  leading  to  the  pinnacle  of 
Fame.  With  the  fiery  glow  of  inordinate  ambi- 
tion igniting  a  flame  of  desperation  in  my  heart 
that  would   one   day  dare  to  tempt   even  Fate 


itself,  there  I  stood.  Ah!  hud  I  then  gazed 
with  equal  intensity  at  the  pit  of  Infamy  Ijeneath, 
I  would  not  be  here  to  tell  my  dread  story. 

"  To  one  who  falls  from  your  sphere  of  life, 
crime  is  living  death ,  the  dungeon's  solitude,  a 
living  tomb.  My  own  case  is  an  enigma  to  the 
philosophy  of  crime.  But,  either  in  a  greater  or 
in  a  less  degree,  it  is  the  same  form  the  danger 
may  most  likely  assume  to  menace  some  one  of 
you.  Human  nature  is  frail  and  weak,  or  per- 
verse and  willful. 

'•  But  had  I  never  suffered  shipwreck  of  for- 
tune, nor  received  a  legal  brand,  I  would  be  to- 
day none  the  less  an  orphan  of  the  heart.  I 
would  be  a  moral  leper  in  disguise — respected  by 
the  world,  but  loathsome  to  myself.  For  myself, 
I  prefer  my  present  degradation,  Avith  nothing 
concealed  and  nothing  to  fear.  Reputation  and 
pubhc  esteem  do  not  make  our  true  character, 
and  are  of  little  intrinsic  value,  when  we  know 
that  the  unveiled  truth  would  shroud  them  in  the 
tln-aldom  of  the  blackest  social  damnation. 

"  I  have  no  purpose  to  enhst  your  sympathy 
for  myself.  But  my  whole  natm-e,  so  long  inertly 
rusting  in  stagnation,  is  thoroughly  aroused  and 
fired  with  a  glowing  desire  and  a  desperate  de- 
termination to  awaken  sympathy  for  yourselves 
and  yours,  that  may  cause  you  to  shun  and  save 
you  from  the  odium  of  that  nameless  curse  which 
makes  joy  and  me  strangers  for  evermore. 

"I  assure  you,  and  most  earnestly,  too,  that  my 
mind  had  never  before  been  so  acutely  perceptive, 
or  so  infallibly  tenacious,  as  it  was  amid  shadows 
of  the  dungeon's  solitude.  Do  you  desire  to 
know  why  this  was  so  ?  My  mind  was  cured  of 
its  fallacious  aberrations.  My  heart  was  free 
from  the  malady  of  moral  leprosy.  The  immortal 
mind,  thus  purified,  elevated  my  being  above  its 
surroundings,  and  taught  me  to  abominate  crime, 
because  of  the  loathsome  degradation  to  which  it 
sinks  mankind,  and  in  which  it  holds  its  pitiable 
victims  so  hopelessly  enthralled. 

"  The  majesty  of  the  mind  defies  the  dungeon's 
bars;  and,  scorning  its  non-restraining  enviroti- 
ments  of  brick  and  granite,  flies  away  to  com- 
mune with  virtuous  purity,  and  drink  ambrosial 
nectar  from  Nature's  crystal  fountains.  It  is  the 
pure  diamond  that  passes  through  the  fiery  cru- 


294 


IklTSTIC  EOMANCES   OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


cible  unscorchod,  and  comes  from  the  test  shining 
in  augmented  lustre.  The  mind  must  rise  or  sink. 
If  it  wills  to  rise,  all  the  powers  of  vice,  crime, 
and  hell — the  triune  genius  that  wields  the  su- 
preme sway  in  abandoned  hearts — cannot  drag  it 
down,  nor  stay  its  triumph. 

■  "  Do  not,  good  people,  I  imiilore  you,  do  not 
despise  these  humble  reflections  because  they  are 
of  dungeon  birth.  Truth,  my  friends,  seeks  a 
dwelling  place  amid  the  inhospitable  confines  of 
dungeon  walls,  whenever  they  hold  in  their  chill- 
ing embrace  a  human  heart!  Wherever  the  heart 
of  man  pulsates,  there  truth,  like  death,  enters 
and  delivers  her  message,  but  does  not,  like 
death,  take  forcible  possession.  She  pleadingly, 
lovmgly,  sues  for  entertainment. 

"  Before  you,  my  friends,  I  stand  this  evening 
enrobed  in  the  habiliments  of  truth,  to  live  in 
disguise  nevermore.  ISTo  gold,  no  prospective 
friendship,  no  anticipations  of  love,  could  lure 
me  to  attempt  to  conceal  what  I  have  been  or 
Avho  I  am,  no  matter  where  I  go.  Now,  one  of 
the  highest  elements  of  my  duty  is  to  deter 
other  people  from  descending  from  the  throne  of 
honor. 

"Oh!  do  not  deceive. yourselves.  When  you 
part  with  the  path  of  honor,  and  cast  away  the 
lamp-light  of  truth,  you  enter  alone  and  helpless 
upon  the  dark  and  tempestuous  sea  of  crime,  ex- 
posed to  all  its  entangling  nets  and  storms  of 
wrecking  contention.  It  is  as  if  you  inhale  the 
contagious  breath  of  the  pestilence,  and  pass  on, 
unconscious  that  the  germ  of  early  death  is  in 
your  being — yet  it  is  there,  subtly  developing  its 
life-blighting  forces.  Suddenly  and  unexpect- 
edly, these  smite  you,  sap  and  poison  the  foun- 
tains of  vitality,  and  spread  to  the  anxious  and 
loving  ones  standing  beside  that  couch  of  un- 
timely death.  Ah!  but  this  is  as  nothing  to  the 
paralytical  stroke  of  moral  leprosy,  that  breaks, 
yet  stills  not  the  heart.  Alas!  for  the  mnocent 
hearts  that  are  thus  broken  and  lacerated,  to 
bleed  in  silent  sorrow  and  pine  with  the  blight 
of  irretrievable  woe.  The  paths  of  honor  and 
shame  start  out  side  by  sifle.  It  is  but  a  step 
from  the  one  to  the  other.  One  may  move  for  a 
time,  with  a  foot  in  each  path,  until  finally  they 
aljruptly  part. 


"  Grood  people,  in  the  affairs  of  life  and  duty 
in  this  world,  independent  of  all  spiritual  con- 
siderations, there  are  but  two  waj's  for  the  trav- 
eler to  pursue;  the  one  is  the  right,  the  other 
the  wrong  way.  And  beyond  the  scope  of  all 
controversy  you  are,  each  of  you,  assuredly  and 
unquestionably  in  one  of  these  ways — you  are 
right  or  you  are  wrong.  If  wrong,  you  are 
subject  to  all  the  dangers  which  beset  the  sinister 
ways  of  life,  and  liable  to  incur  all  the  fearful 
penalties  which  they  entail.  From  the  forbidden 
path  there  is  very  rarely  a  voluntary  return,  and 
a  full  and  free  confession.  Partial  returns,  with 
hidden  crimes  that  remain  unatoned,  are  worse 
yet  than  the  dungeon's  haunted  gloom.  Every 
moment,  whatever  is  designed  for  the  sweetest 
bliss  of  life,  is  transformed  to  the  bitterest  woe. 
The  shadow  of  an  imaginary  pursuer  haunts  the 
charming  joys  of  the  most  delightful  enter- 
tainment with  pleasant  friends,  disturbs  the  most 
soothing  slumbers,  and  embitters  the  purest 
fountains  of  love. 

"  These  are  tortures  fi'om  which  there  is 
no  escape,  for  which  there  is  no  remedy,  but 
to  tear  away  the  mask  of  deception  and  confess 
the  truth  to  some  trusty  friends.  Thus  may 
the  potent  charm  of  that  fatal  spell  oe  broken ; 
a  spell   so   aptly  depicted  by  the    poet   in  the 

lines — 

'And  like  the  bird  whose  pinions  quake, 
But  cannot  fly  the  gazing  snake.' 

"Oh  my  friends!  be  there  one  of  you  in  any 
stage  of  this  hope-wasting  slavery,  in  the  name 
of  all  that  is  lovable,  dear  and  sacred  in  this 
life,  let  me  conjuringly  implore  you  to  break  its 
galhng  chaiift  without  delay.  Shut  your  eyes 
and  rend  these  fetters,  regai'dless  of  imaginary 
consequences.  Call  around  you  your  dearest 
ones  and  nearest  friends,  and  have  the  gentle 
tenderness  of  loving  and  friendly  hands  to  extri- 
cate you  from  the  subtle  embrace  of  the  destroy- 
ing mask,  the  baneful  curse  of  all  false  lives. 
Could  you  realize  what  it  is  to  have  the  mask  of 
life,  the  curse  of  earth,  torn  away  by  the  rude 
and  pitiless  hand  of  the  law,  not  one  of  you 
would  ever  experience  these  nameless  pangs. 
But  beware  of  the  mask  in  its  mildest  and  most 
seemingly   innocent  form,  because   it   leads   its 


THE  ATONEMENT   OFFERING. 


295 


victims  into  the  (.'lutclios  of  the  Law  or  drives 
them  beneath  the  sods  of  premature  graves. 

"Ladies,  this  cruel  truth  applies  to  you  with 
more  crushing  and  overwhelming  force  than  it 
docs  to  men — not  always  be'cause  of  your  own 
errors  so  much  as  on  account  of  the  false  lives 
of  deceitful  men.  Forlorn  and  desolate,  indeed, 
is  that  man's  lot,  in  tiio  realm  of  bright  life,  for 
whose  waywardness  no  true  woman's  heart  would 
bleed.  Each  of  you  can  fight  intemperance  and 
vice  by  becoming  the  guardian  angel  of  your 
husband,  your  brother,  your  cousin,  your  child- 
hood's friend,  or  your  sweetheart.  Such  is  the 
magnetism  of  a  pure  woman's  power  of  influ- 
ence, so  skillful  her  devices  for  exercising  it, 
when  thoroughly  determined  to  win  the  sway 
over  the  conduct  of  man,  that  one  word,  a  glance 
of  the  eye,  even,  will  tame  a  man  for  whom  the 
law's  unrelenting  scourge  has  no  restraining  ter- 
rors, and  sever  him  from  a  proneness  to  stray  in 
devious  paths.  The  wisest,  the  bravest  of  men, 
despots  and  conquerors,  each  have  been  van- 
quished and  tamed  by  one  little  woman.  You 
are  Nature's  queens,  destined  to  reign  over 
society,  over  the  home  circle,  and  over  the 
hearts  of  men.  By  demanding  these  rights  and 
ruling  over  them  with  gentle  despotism,  the 
only  sovereignity  you  would  willingly  maintain, 
you  would  not  be  usurping;  the  world  would 
become  better;  many  bitter  tears  would  never 
be  wept — woman's  despairing  midnight  tears. 

"  Oh  merciful  Heaven !  what  silent  wretched- 
ness the  mask  has  caused !  "Were  but  half  its 
buried  secrets  known ;  were  the  silent  groanings 
of  all  the  despairing  hearts  that  are  lacerated, 
crushed  and  rent  by  the  cruel  tyranny  of  its  hope- 
less slavery,  sent  forth  upon  the  wings"  of  the 
wind  for  but  one  night,  so  that  all  the  world 
might  hear  them,  those  who  knew  not  the  cause 
Avould  tremble  in  speechless  terror  and  stand  ap- 
palled, under  the  conviction  that  the  ministers  of 
doom's-day  were  on  earth,  ready  to  sound  the 
awful  judgment  knell. 

"  Blessed  are  those  who  are  strangers  to  this 
unutterable  damnation,  that  turns  the  fondest 
to  dust,  the  brightest  dreams  of  life  to  the 
desolate  despair ;  thrice  blessed  will  be  those 
who  pass  down  to  the  shores  of  the  dark  river, 


and  over  into  the  great  UnknoAvn,  without  having 
experienced  the  mysteries  of  this  relentless  curse. 

'-Well  may  the  ministers  of  God  startle  the 
souls  of  the  wicked  with  their  warning  notes  of 
'  woe !  woe ! '  if  that  doom  be  as  dreadful  for  spirits 
as  this  is  for  flesh  and  blood,  when  it  goes  not 
beyond  the  purgatory  of  liberty,  and  buries  the 
mortal  secrets  of  shame  beneath  the  sods  of  the 
grave,  without  the  stigma  of  a  legal  brand.  Then, 
oh  merciful  God !  what  can  T  say  of  those  who 
go  down  to  the  darkest  depths  of  an  earthly  hell  ? 
Where,  where  are  the  words  adequate  to  the 
power  of  expressive  coloring  requisite  to  paint 
this  frightful  reality?  Unknown  to  mortal  man.  No 
words  can  depict,  no  artist  could  portray  the  woe- 
ful despair  and  haunted  gloom  that  pervade  the 
dread  precincts  of  a  living  tomb.  I  have  passed 
through  both  this  purgatory  and  this  hell  on  earth; 
and  I  swear  to  you,  by  the  sacred  memory  of  all 
that  I  have  loved,  and  all  that  I  have  lost,  and  by 
the  untold  memory  of  all  that  I  have  suflfered, 
that  they  are  no  vague  and  fancy  dreams,  coined 
by  a  distempered  mind,  but  realities  as  crue  as 
the  blessed  sun  that  gladdens  the  world,  and  as 
stern  as  the  decree  that  dooms  all  mankind  to 
death. 

"Ah!  good  people,  these  frightful  lessons  of 
experience,  drawn  from  sources  so  broad,  so  deep, 
and  so  terrible,  what  ^artling  memories  cluster 
about  them!  Oh,  that  you  could  but  see  and 
realize  them  for  a  moment,  in  the  cruel  terrors 
of  their  actual  existence!  May  not  one  of  you 
evcir  be  nearer  the  reahty  than  you  are  now.  Could 
I,  fifteen  years  ago,  heard  what  you  have  just 
heard,  or  its  purport,  I  would  not  be  standing 
here  to  tell  my  story  as  a  warning  to  others.  Pon- 
der it  weU.  Go  through  it  in  imagination,  because 
the  reahty  is  immedicable  ruin. 

"  Those  of  you  who  have  loved  ones,  love  them 
lietter.  If  any  of  them  be  wayward,  do  not  spurn 
and  cast  them  off,  but  strive  to  win  them  back 
to  duty  and  to  love — for  the  natural  channels  of 
kindred  ties  and  blood  are  such  that  nothing  can 
stay  them;  no  matter  how  grevious  the  cause  be 
that  dries  them  up  for  a  season,  some  time  they 
will  re-flow  again  over  the  lapse  of  years,  the 
l)readth  of  the  world,  or  the  sods  of  the  grave. 
Better,  a  thousand  times  better,  that  they  re-flow 


296 


MYSTIC  KOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


over  the  sods  of  the  grave,  than  over  prison  walU 
and  a  Hving  tomb. 

"  Such,  my  friends,  is  my  atonement  offering. 
Deign  to  accept  and  treasure  it.  Its  waned  lus- 
tre may  serve  to  keep  your  life-jev?els  bright. 
Its  value  is  in  this  fearful  contrast." 

Cloud  made  a  retrospective  picture  of  his  own 
career  and  experience  in  harrowing  colors;  a 
mere  outUne  of  what  has  been  so  elaborately  por- 
trayed in  this  volume.  It  made  a  deep  impres- 
sion on  the  minds  of  his  auditors,  and  led  to 
earnest  discussion. 

The  stand  he  has  taken,  the  labors  he  has 
rendered,  and  the  enterprises  in  wliich  he  is 
engaged,  seem  to  promise  that  Garland  Cloud 
is  yet  destined  to  do  much  for  the  human  race, 
and  truly  and  honorably  redeem  his  vows  made 
under  the  shadows  of  the  war-cloud,  and  in 
the  shades  of  the  dungeon's  "gloom.  There 
appears  to  be  every  plausible  reason  to  sup- 
port the  presumption  that  he  will  pursue  the 
course  upon  which  he  has  entered,  and  httle 
in  favor  of  a  suspicion  that  he  w^ill  be  lured  or 
driven  to  abandon  it  for  anything  less  n9ble. 
There  is  every  reasonable  prospect  that  he  may 
now  be  many  fold  more  valuable  to  the  world 
than  he  ever  could  have  been  had  be  never  suf- 
fered ;  and  the  Avorld  seems  disposed  to  use  him. 
If  his  experience  has  not  been  consummate  in 
deceptive  arts,  and  the  consequences  of  such  in- 
discretion amply  terrible  to  constitute  lessons 
of  warning,  it  would  be  hard  to  find  either  a  de- 
votee or  a  victim  possessing  these  features  of  the 
shady  Characteristics  of  erratic  life. 

Garland  ■  Cloud  has  declined  every  overture, 
coming  from  friends  of  the  olden  time,  tendering 
him  assistance,  or  soliciting  him  to  embark  in 
commercial  enterprises.  He  claims  that  he  is  hope- 
lessly exiled  from  the  world  of  commerce,  and 
that  he  is  weaned  from  the  desire  to  enter  the 
conflict  there  again,  where  his  rashness  cost  him 
so  many  scars,  and  where,  necessarily,  he  would 
labor  under  so  many  incalculable  disadvantages. 
Perhaps  he  is  right.  Men  with  fair  names  and 
ample  capital  find  a  hard  struggle  to  stem  the 
commercial  tide  and  hold  their  own  in  a  business 
voyage  in  1883,  and  many  go  under.  "What 
then  could  a  man  do  without  such  potent  requi- 


sites? Aljsolutt'ly  nothing.  But  Garland  Cloud 
can  do  much  in  other  fields,  those  in  which  he 
has  undertaken  to  devote  himself. 

Garland  Cloud's  greatest  and  most  perplexing 
problem  is  concentrated  in  that  one  characteristic 
word — "  Manonia."  In  this  fair  name  and  sad  mem- 
ory obtains  the  one  remaining  spectre  which  yet 
continues  to  haunt  his  cheerless  hfe.  Back  to  her 
his  mind  ever  wanders,  to  linger  in  longing  fond- 
ness, and  to  pine  with  the  agony  of  unavaihng 
regrets.  "Upon  all  other  subjects  he  expresses 
himself  with  unreserved  freedom.  About  her  he 
speaks  rarely,  and  with  guarded  brevity.  To 
Carrie  Flowers  he  has  said : 

"I  can  express  no  intention  as  to  Manonia; 
she  is  my  lost,  my  regretted,  my  ever  mourned 
bride.  That  I  am  severed  from  her — simply  the 
cruel  reahty  of  separation — adds  httle,  never  has 
added  much  to  my  pangs.  But  the  true  nature 
of  that  fatal  and  broken  chain  which  once  bound 
her  to  me,  the  fearful  manner  in  which  fc  "vas 
rent  in. twain,  her  awful  wi'ongs  and  her  wretched 
suffering — it  is  the  thought  of  these  things  that  is 
unbearable." 

Carrie  :  "  Have  you  any  tidings  from  her  since 
your  last  letter  on  this  subject  was  mailed  to  me  ?  " 

Cloud  :  "  No,  my  friend ;  I  know  notliing  what- 
ever, save  the  meagre  part,  presented  in  connec- 
tion with  her  name  that  led  to  unmasking  me.  I 
do  not  know  her  feehngs ;  I  have  no  means  of 
learning  them." 

Carrie  :  "  Do  you  mean  ever  to  write  to  her?  " 

Cloud:  "This  question  I  am  unable  to  answer. 
I  could  hope  that  she  detests  me ;  yet  I  have  not 
the  courage  to  ask  her.  Her  reproaches  would 
drive  me  mad.  Could  I  learn  her  sentiments 
and  fate  from  others  than  her  or  hers,  without 
their  knowledge,  I  might  make  the  attempt.  But 
to  know  that  she  still  cherishes  for  me  any  degree 
of  that  endearing  devotion  which  '  not  time,  nor 
sorrow,  nor  pain,'  can  ever  stifle  in  my  being, 
would  but  add  to  my  present  suffering." 

Carrie  :  "  "What  do  you  regard  as  your  duty  in 
this  respect,  and  other  social  relations  of  life  ?  " 

Cloud:  "I  know  not  my  duty  to  poor  Man- 
onia; I  think  it  silent  absence.  In  no  otlier  way 
can  I  imagine  it  possible  to  pay  her  due  reverence, 
for  my  greeting  or  my  appearance  would  but  add 


THE  ATONEMENT  OFFEKING. 


297 


to  outrageous  wrong,  more  aggravated  iusult:  As 
to  social  duties,  I  have  none,  more  than  to  mend 
my  ways,  and  strive  to  do  good  to  others ;  I  am 
a  social  waif." 

Carrie  :  "  I  do  not  see  any  other  feasible  course 
open  for  you,  as  to  Manonia,  but  that  which  you 
have  intimated  as  the  probable  one  to  be  adopted 
and  pursued.  Were  I  in  her  place  it  would  be 
preferable  to  me.  Her  wrongs  are  irreparable  ; 
her  wounds  may  never  heal.  Fresh  and  forcible 
reminders  of  you  could  but  probe  anew  her  long- 
festering  punctures  of  unmerciful  sorrow.  But  to 
society,  to  your  race  and  line,  you  yet  owe  a  duty. 
Your  marriage  with  Manonia  is  a  nullity.  You 
owe  it  to  yourself  and  the  world  to  get  married, 
and  to  cease  to  be  an  aimless  wanderer.  In  no 
other  way  can  you  ever  fully  atone  for  the  past. 
This  is  the  true  incense  of  your  offerings,  with- 
out which  they  are  tendered  in  vain." 

Cloud:  "Oh  Carrie!  are  you  the  victim  of 
frenzied  madness,  or  are  you  laboring  under  the 
delusion  of  a  deceptive  hallucination?  Do  you 
imagine  that  I  am  capable  of  marrying  while 
Manonia  hves  single  in  her  great  sorrow?  I  am 
debas^l,  perhaps,  beyond  redemption,  but  I  have 
not  yet  descended  to  that  stage  of  detestable 
degradation.  I  am,  if  still  human,  yet  Garland 
Cloud.  The  same  wretch  upon  whom  you  now 
gaze  is  wedded  to  Manonia — she  is  his  hapless 
bride,  no  matter  about  the  false  nature  or  delusive 
name.  I  cannot,  I  will  not  niarry  again.  The 
idea  is  preposterous.  No  lady  is  so  blind  as  to 
marry  wretchedness.  I  am  not  so  unmanly  as  to 
seek  such  a  victim.  I  was  the  despoiler  of  Man- 
onia, but  if  false  to  her,  I  will  yet  be  true  to  her 
memory.  '  Sweet  Angel  of  the  South,'  hover  over 
me  now  and  stay  the  luring  fascination  of  tempt- 
ing dangers — snares  that  destroyed  thy  dreamy 
bliss!" 

Carrie:  "Garland,  I  am  not  mad.  Your  de- 
votion is  noble  and  manly.  Doubly  does  this 
demonstrate  your  duty.  To  you,  Manonia  is  dead. 
You  will  be  no  less  true  to  her  memory  than  you 
were  to  mine  when  you  married  her.  There  was 
no  barrier  between  us.  In  Heaven  I  am  as  much 
your  bride  as  you  are  her  husband.  You  deserted 
me  without  any  cause.  In  obedience  to  your 
heartless  will  I  sacrificed  a  cherished  memory — 


truer  than  any  ever  held  in  imaged  sacredness  by 
you — upon  the  altar  of  duty,  and  married.  I  have 
never  regretted,  do  not  regret  that  step.  Now  I 
demand  of  you  the  same  sacrifice.  I  have  a  right 
to  expect  compliance.  Return  to  Manonia,  and 
throw  yourself  at  her  feet,  or  renounce  your 
allegiance  to  her  forever.  Such  is  your  duty  to 
society,  the  Avorld,  yourself  and  your  God.  You 
have  no  more  right  to  allow  your  manhood  to 
run  to  waste  from  the  blight  of  an  unavailing  re- 
gret than  you  have  to  commit  suicide.  You  have 
rendered  two  true  and  devoted  women  miserable. 
Now  you  owe  it  to  womenkind  to  make  one  good 
woman  happy." 

Cloud  :  "  Carrie,  all^words  are  idle  to  me,  and 
meaningless  on  this  subject.  I  confess,  with 
shame,  that  I  owe  you  much  more  than  my  life 
itself  for  the  pain  I  caused  you.  But  instead  of 
giving  a  good  woman  her  meed  of  happiness,  I 
would  but  doom  her  to  wretchedness.  Joy  will 
dwell  not  with  me.  My  shadowy  existence  would 
dim  its  lustre,  and  then  extinguish  its  feebly- 
flickering  rays  forever,  and  another  fair  woman 
would  become  the  mournful  victim  of  disappointed 
love.  To  the  plausible  argument  of  Manonia, 
whose  bent  of  mind  ran  much  as  yours  runs  now, 
I  once  yielded.  You  know  the  sequence  of  that 
surrender.  What  good  and  rational  woman  could 
wed  such  inevitable  misery  as  I  could  but  prom- 
ise? Ah,  Carrie,  this  is  wasted  breath  we  are 
employing.  I  shall  never  offer  a  trusting  woman 
my  hope-devouring  curse." 

Carrie:  "Garland,  you  amaze  me!  Your 
obdurate  will  no  disappointment,  no  sorrow,  no 
loss,  no  bereavement,  no  pain  can  tame.  The 
unyielding  young  trooper  stands  before  me  now 
unchanged  and  changeless,  in  proud  defiance  to 
the  gentle  authority  of  his  most  solicitous  friend, 
as  he  stood  then  in  rebellion  against  the  fondest 
wish  of  his  admiring  genius,  cruelly  denying 
poor  infatuated  Carrie  Harman  the  maddening 
dream  of  her  life.  Now  he  as  stubbornly  denies 
recognition  to  his  duty,  and  turns  a  deaf  ear  to 
its  admonitory  mandates.  Oh,  Garland !  I  am 
despairing  of  you.  There  is  no  hope  for  you. 
You  are  lost — lost!  " 

Cloud  :  "  Whom  would  you  have  me  victimize  ? 
Suppose  you  were  free,  and  met  a  man,  now  the 


298 


IVIYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


first  time — a  man  who  might  seek  to  ■win  j^our 
hand  and  heart — and  you  early  learned  that  his 
life  was  dirouded  in  odious  shame,  what  would 
you  do  ?" 

Carrie  :  "  Marry  him — if  his  name  was  G-ar- 
land  Cloud."  ! 

Cloud:  " Ah,  Carrie  !  but  remember  all  ladies  i 
are  not  Carrie  Flowers."  j 

Carrie  :  "I  do;  and  that  all  men  are  not  Gar-  | 
land  Cloud.  I  know  a  lady,  beautiful  as  day,  ! 
pure  as  crystal,  wise  as  a  sage,  and  wealthy  as —  | 
well,  as  even  quite  extravagant  ideas  could  desire  : 
— ready  to  marry  G-arland  Cloud.  She  knows  i 
his  story.  I  am  to  introduce  her  to  you  this  i 
evening.  Your  suflfering,  as  depicted  to  her  by  ] 
me,  has  won  her  ere  you  greet  her  and  are  | 
greeted  by  her  smile,  which,  I  am  sure,  will  I 
gently  touch  your  heart."  i 

Cloud  :  "  In  this  arrangement,  it  occurs  to  my 
mind  that  you  prematurely  reckoned  on  one  in- 
significant yet  rather  important  personage,  and  | 
answered  for  him- without  authority.  When  your 
fair  lady  arrives,  you  may  introduce  her  to  my 
vacant  place  in  the  room.  I  shall  not  be  here  to 
receive  her  smile,  nor  to  give  her  mine — that 
could  be  but  a  deceptive  lie.  Carrie,  yours  is 
'  love's  labor  lost.'  " 

Carrie  :  "  Garland,  you  inexorable  ingrate  ! 
G-o  back  to  Manonia.  Such  devotion  should  not 
be  cherished  in  vain.  Rarely  has  such  severed 
love  lingered  with  this  abiding  constancy.  It 
should — it  shall  be  re-united." 

Cloud  :  "  Again  are  you  hasty.  Our  sever- 
ance— rendered  thus  by  her  wrongs  from  me — 
may  be  eternal.  I  deserve  it;  cannot  ask  it 
otherwise;  yet  it  precludes  the  possibihty  of 
other  tender  ties  ever  existing  between  any 
charming  angel  of  earth  and  I.  No,  Carrie  ; 
your  anxious  solicitude,  your  care,  and  j^our 
trouble  have  been  bestowed  but  to  reward  you 
with  fierce  disappointment.  I  would  rather  pass 
my  days  in  a  dungeon,  with  Manonia's  voiceless 
portrait,  than  in  a  palace  with  a  fairy  queen. 
Good  night." 

*  *  *  * 

Far  down  in  a  little  valley  in  the  heart  of 
Louisiana,  the  sun  has  set.  The  crimson  fires 
that  its  going  down    had  kindled  in  the  west, 


have  died  away,  and  from  their  ashes  has  sprung, 
phoenix-like,  one  solitary  evening  star. 

Purple  shadows  sliroud  the  distant  hiUs  ;  now 
and  then,  across  the  dewy  air,  the  drowsy  chirp 
of  some  discontented  songster,  half  asleep,  is 
heard.  For  the  rest,  there  is  the  dewy  silence, 
and  still  repose,  and  ineffable  peace  of  night. 

Where  the  shadows  fall  the  darkest,  in  the 
door  of  an  old  plantation  homestead  set  down  al- 
most in  the  midst  of  a  grove  of  oaks  and  hicko- 
ries and  pines,  a  woman  stands.  She  holds  in 
her  hand  a  spray  of  honeysuckle,  which  .she  has 
pulled  down  from  the  festooned  arch  above  her 
head.  Her  face  shows  indistinctly  through  the 
gloom — beautiful,  even  with  the  white  seal  of 
sorrow  and  suffering  set  upon  it.  Her  eyes,  with 
the  wistful  sadness  of  years  of  waiting  in  their 
depths,  are  fixed  upon  the  distant  hills. 

A  step  upon  the  walk  arouses  her  from  a  reve- 
rie that  holds  no  happiness  in  its  dream.  A 
.figure,  coming  slowly  through  the  grey  twilight, 
causes  her  to  run  down  the  steps  to  meet  it.  It 
stops  as  she  approaches,  and  lays  a  wrinkled, 
brown  hand  upon  her  shoulder.  She  shps  it 
.through  her  arm,  and  they  walk  thus  up  the  path 
and  into  the  house. 

"  You  are  late,  to-night,  father,"  she  says. 

Eldred  Donne:  "Yes,  Manonia;  yes,  I  am 
late." 

He  sits  in  his  arm-chair,  watching  his  daughter 
as  she  busies  herself  about  the  room.  For  the 
beautiful,  sad  woman,  in  the  dress  of  plain  and 
simple  black,  with  the  eyes  that  have  looked 
upon  more  days  of  sorrow  I'lan  they  have  years 
of  life,  is  Manonia — Garland  Cloud's  ill-fated  bride. 

Eldred  Donne  Ls  changed  also.  Time  has  not 
spared  him.  She  has  seamed  his  face  with 
wrinkles ;  she  has  bent  his  once  erect  form,  and 
enfeebled  his  once  firm  step,  and  the  snows  of 
her  many  winters  rest  thickly  upon  his  head. 

Presently  Manonia  comes  and  sits  beside  him ; 
then  his  eyes,  that  have  been  fixed  upon  her 
musingly,  betoken  a  sudden  recollection. 

Donne:  "I  have  abetter  for  you,  Manonia.  I 
had  quite  forgotten  it.     Here  it  is." 

Manonia":  "  From  whom  can  it  have  come? 
I  am  certain  that  I  never  saw  that  handwriting 
before." 


THE   ATONEMENT   OFFERING. 


299 


Manonia  breaks  the  seal,  moving,  as  she  does 
so,  nearer  the  hght  in  the  centre  of  the  room,  so 
that  her  face  is  quite  hidden  from  her  father. 

There  is  a  long,  long  silence,  so  long  that 
Eldred  Donn6  several  times  looked  at  his  daugh- 
ter inquiringly.  Surely  it  was  not  a  letter  that 
should  take  so  much  time  to  read.     At  length  lie 


"  Manonia." 

There  is  no  answer;  she  does  not  even  turn 
her  head;  not  when  he  speaks  a  second  time 
does  she  look  up.  At  length  he  rises  and  goes 
softly  to  her  side. 

The  letter  has  fallen  in  her  lap ;  she  sits  with 
her  hands  clasped  across  it.  The  pallor  of  her  face 
has  deepened,  and  her  eyes  have  the  far-away 
look  of  one  who  sees,  past  the  light  of  this  sphere, 
the  visions  of  a  world  beyond. 

Donne:  "Manonia,  my  child,  speak  to  me. 
What  is  the  matter  ?  " 

Manonia  :  "  My  father,  you  have  called  me 
back  from  among  the  dead.  G-hosts  of  days  that 
are  gone  forever ;  memories  over  whose  grave  the 
grasses  have  long  been  growing;  voices,  tones — 
ah !  my  father,  this  has  brought  them  from  their 
sepulchres,  unlocked  them  from  their  fast-bound 
sleep." 

She  unfolds  the  letter  as  she  speaks,  and  while 
the  old  man  Ustens  with  attention  and  wonder, 
she  reads : 

"  ' Place,  New  York,  June  — ,  18 — . 

"  '  Mrs.  Manonia  Garland, 

"  'Rural  Rest,  La.  : 

"  '  Madam : — One  who  is  unknown  to  you,  but 
whose  heart  has  ached  over  the  story  of  your 
wrongs,  and  whose  eyes  have  dimmed  in  sym- 
pathy with  your  sorrows,  has  a  short  story  to  tell 
you,  and  craves  your  pardon  should  its  telling 
prove  tedious  or  unwelcome. 

"  '  Sixteen  years  ago  a  woman  listened,  one 
night,  to  a  tale  that  is  as  old  as  the  first-created 
hills,  but  to  all  ears,  at  some  first  time  of  its  tell- 
ing, is  new,  and  sweet,  and  very  precious.  This 
woman  loved  the  man  who  told  it.  You — for- 
give me  if  my  pen  deals  a  blow  here — have  also 
loved,  and  know  what  sweet  music  this  story  was 
to  the  listener's  ears. 


"'But  a  mistaken  motive  and  a  false  pride, 
sealed  her  lips — kept  back  from  their  utterance 
words  that  her  heart  wildly  longed  to  speak; 
and  while  from  the  depths  of  her  soul  she  cried, 
"I  love  you,"  her  lips  said,  "Wait,  I  must  yet 
consider." 

"  '  Miserable  procrastination !  to  what  did  it 
not  lead  ?  Hollow,  blighting  pride,  what  untold 
sorrow  did  she  not  store  up  for  herself  in  listen- 
ing to  its  delusive  counsels  !  But  pardon  me  my 
digression.     I  resume  my  story. 

"  '  The  breath  of  slander,  fanned  into  life  by 
envious  hate  and  bitter  jealousy,  assailed  this 
man.  Deluded  into  the  belief  that  all  who  heard 
its  lying  tongue  believed  it  the  voice  of  truth, 
and — bitterest  blow  of  all,  which  her  own  hand 
had  aided  in  striking — deeming  that  the  woman 
he  loved  listened  implicitly  to  its  poisoned  tale, 
he  determined  upon  self-destruction,  and  left  her 
to  mourn  him  as  dead. 

"  '  There  is  a  break  in  my  story  here  which  I 
deem  it  unnecessary  to  close.  He  drifted  out  of 
her  life,  but  not,  through  Heaven's  merciful  in- 
tervention, from  hfe  itself. 

"  '  Another  woman  met  him  and  loved  him. 
Ah,  my  sister  in  sorrow,  /  know  truly  how  well 
— hoAv  bitterly,  sorrowfully  well ! 

"  '  And  he  married  her.  Of  her  wrongs  and 
sorrows,  her  anguish  in  the  bitter  after-time,  her 
weary,  slow-creeping  days  of  pain,  her  sleepless, 
Jtardily-dragging  nights  of.  misery,  your  heart 
knows  the  full  completeness,  and  mine  pities. 

"  'This  man's  life  has  been  one  long  night.  In 
its  time  of  summer  the  frosts  of  winter  blighted 
it,  and  her  thick-falling  snows  buried  its  blossoms 
of  joy  in.  an  icy  shroud. 

" '  The  measure  of  his  life  holds  many  sins, 
"  full,  overflowing,  running  over."  And. a  retribu- 
tive Power  has  meted  out  to  him,  for  his  many 
misdeeds,  a  penance  likewise.  Truly  has  it  been 
"  measure  for  measure." 

"  '  Disaster  has  pursued,  misfortune  has  over- 
taken him.  The  dreary  walls  of  a  prison-tomb 
have  witnessed  his  repentance,  and  within  the 
narrow  confines  of  his  cell  Remorse  has  been  an 
ever-constant  guest.  In  the  still,  slow  hours  of 
dragging  midnights,  he  has  heard  the  "  never, 
never  "   whispered  by  the  phantom  years,  and 


300 


IMTSTIC  EOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


the  ceaseless  whisper  of  a  sleepless   conscience 
has  sounded  ever  in  his  ears,  "  It  might  have  been !" 

"  'Oh,  is  not  she  whose  wrongs  and  sorrows 
will  pursue  him  to  his  grave,  and  whose 
mournful  face  will  haunt  him  until  death — is  she 
not  avenged  ? 

"  '  Some  time  ago  ne  was  urged  by  one  who 
held  his  welfare  of  great  interest,  to  marry. 
These  are  his  words:  "Do  you  imagine  me 
capable  of  marrying  while  Manonia  Hves  single 
in  her  great  sorrow?  I  am  debased,  perhaps, 
beyond  redemption,  but  I  have  not  yet  descended 
to  that  stage  of  detested  degradation.  I  am,  if 
still  human,  yet  Garland  Cloud.  *  *  *  j  -^y^g 
the  despoiler  of  Manonia.  But  if  false  to  her,  I 
will  yet  be  true  to  her  name." 

"  '  Interrogated  by  this  same  friend  as  to  his 
duty  to  the  woman  he  had  so  cruelly  wronged, 
he  replied,  "I  know  not  my  duty  to  poor 
Manonia.  I  think  it  silent  absence;  in  no  other 
way  can  I  imagine  it  possible  to  pay  her  due 
reverence." 

"  'Need  I  say  more?  Does  not  the  heart  of 
the  woman  to  whom  I  am  writing  know  the 
rest?  Is  it  so  cruelly  broken  that  it  has  no  thrill 
of  pity  for  one  who,  sinning  much,  has  suffered 
more?  Slie  who  loved  him  once,  and  whose 
hps  have  drank  deep  fi'om  the  bitter  cup  which 
you  have  drained  to  the  dregs,  has  forgiven  him. 
Do  other  wrongs  require  fuller  vengeance  ?  Are 
we  better  than  He  who  would  forgive — aye, 
"  seventy  times  seven  ? ' ' 

"  '  My  story  is  done — but  a  word  more 
remains.  He  is  conscious  that  his  sins  have 
been  so  great  that  he  dare  not  ask  her  sinned 
against  for  pardon.  He  is  in  New  York.  He 
does  not  know  or  dream  of  this  thing  I  have 
done.  If  you  can  forgive  him,  send  him  hope. 
"  '  Your  sister  in  suffering, 

"  '  Cakrue  Plowers.'  " 

Donne  :  "  So  Garland  "Cloud  is  heard  from  at 
last.  A  fine  letter,  that,  fine — in  words.  How 
does  it  run?  'If  you  can  forgive  him.'  And 
after  the  best  years  of  his  hfe  have  been  squan- 
dered, he  Avould  gather  up  the  pitiful  remainder 
as  an  atonement  to  the  life  he  has  wrecked. 
After  the  sorrow,  and  the  misery,  and  the  des- 


pair— heartless  man — that  he  has  caused,  he 
would  ask  his  victim " 

Manonia:  "Father,  my  father,  I  have  suffered 
enough.     Spare  me  !  " 

She  has  sufiered  in  meekness,  and  borne  her 
sorrows  in  silence.  The  great  patience  which 
Heaven  sometimes  vouchsafes  its  stricken  children, 
has  been  her  endowment.  Like  unto  Him  who 
was  reviled  by  men  and  jeered  at  by  priests,  she 
whose  sweet  dreams  of  happiness  Fate  has 
laughed  to  scorn,  at  the  mockings  of  the  fickle 
goddess,  has  "  ansAvered  not  a  word."  But  now, 
as  those  old  memories  come  back  to  her — those 
bittersweet  recollections  of  the  long  ago — the  pain 
of  their  bitterness  and  the  joy  of  their  sweetness 
once  more  thrills  her  heart.  She  bows  her  head 
upon  the  table,  and  her  eyes  grow  dim  with  tears. 

The  old  man's  voice  falters,  and  his  eyes 
grovv  dim.  That  he  should  add  one  stab  to  the 
cureless  wounds  already  inflicted  in  the  heart  of 
his  daughter,  unmans  him.  His  head  bows,  and 
his  rough,  hard  hand  gently  strokes  her  hair,  as 
he  says: 

"  There,  there,  Manonia,  don't  mind  me.  I'm 
.old,  you  know,  and  I  get  easily  upset.  There, 
there,  you  shall  do  as  3"ou  like.  I  never  meant — 
Suppose  we  let  it  drop?     Yes.     Goodnight." 

Manonia:  "Good  night,  my  father.  Alone — 
Ah,  no,  not  alone.  I  cannot  be  that — never. 
What  memories!  "What  sweet  dead  dreams! 
The  man  I  loved  so  long  ago---My  husband 
once.  He  who  embittered  my  life;  furrowed  my 
brow  with  lines  of  care ;  dimmed  my  eyes  with 
tears — bitter  blinding  tears  of  sorrow — Why 
should  I  pity  him  who  had  none  for  me  ?  And  yet, 
and  yet — ah  me!  a  woman's  heart  is  hard  to 
read." 

The  darkness  falls  with  silent  wings.  Its 
swiftly  descending  shadows  shut  out  the  dim 
outlines  of  the  far  mountains,  the  misty  hills,  the 
valleys  between.  The  wind  chants  its  lullaby  to 
the  sleeping  world,  through  the  thick  branches  of 
the  green  old  pines;  and  only  the  stars,  gazing 
down  upon  silence,  see  the  white,  troubled  face 
of  the  woman  who  is  striving  to  read  her  own 
heart— her  beautiful  sad  eyes  lifted  wistfully  up- 
ward to  the  light  of  their  sleepless  and  eternal 
glory. 


THE  DAWN  FROM  A  LONG  AND  GLOOMY  NIGHT 


301 


CHAPTER   LXXY. 

THE    DAWN    FROiM    A    LONG    AND    GLOOMY    NIGHT. 

"  For  lives  that  hold  no  pain  are  held  In  earthly  prison 
bars, 
And  griefs  are  often    wings  whereby  our  souls  can 
reach  the  stars. 
For  in  the  Are  the  dross  is  burned,  the  gold  stands  pure 
and  good, 
And  she  who  suffers  wears  the   best,  the    crown  of 
womanhood." 

— M.  A.  Billings. 

Mrs.  Carrie  Flowers,  in  accordance  with  the 
pohte  fiction  thatsociety  allows,  is  "not  at  home," 
although  the  convenient  precaution  is,  in  this 
case,  scarcely  necessary,  for  few  would  feel  in- 
clined to  be  abroad — even  for  the  seeking  of 
Mrs.  Carrie  Flowers — on  such  a  night,  one  dark 
and  stormy,  with  the  rain  coming  down  in  fitful 
gusts,  dashing  against  the  windows,  not  at  all 
well  pleased  to  find  itself  so  securely  barred  from 
the  mischief  it  contemplates  and  vainly  strives  to 
execute. 

She  is  alone,  with  the  curtains  pulled  down, 
and  the  light  falling  across  the  easy  chair  in 
which  she  is  snugly  ensconced.  She  is  think- 
ing, with  a  little  running  commentary  upon  her 
thoughts,  which,  judging  from  the  expression  of 
her  dissatisfied  face,  and  the  disconnected  sen- 
tences which  fall  from  her  lips,  are  neither  very 
pleasing  nor  yet  instructive. 

"  Two,  three — no,  foiir  weeks,  and  I  have  heard 
not  a  Avord.  It  was  foolish  of  me  to  write  that 
letter — I  cannot  imagine  what  G-arland  would 
think  of  me.  And  some  women  do  not  easily 
forgive.  I  am  sure  I — but  then,  I  am  not  Ma- 
nonia,  Mrs.  Garland  Cloud. 

"  However,  I  need  not  proclaim  my  foolish- 
ness from  the  housetop.  I  am  certain  that  I 
shall  entertain  no  one  wdth  that  tale  of  folly. 
As  for  Garland,  there  is  no  shaking  his  firm  res- 
olution. It  is  a  pity;  he  has  caused  her  much 
misery,  it  is  true,  and  it  is  properly  wise  that  sho 
should  do  as  she  does  and  pay  no  heed  to  my 
reckless  letter ;  yet — oh,  why  could  she  not  be 
foolish,  and  forgive  him  ?" 

Thus,    Carrie    Flowers,  deeply  buried  in  her 


own  thoughts,  and  absorbed  in  the  puzzling  maze 
of  her  own  perplexities,  fails  to  hear  the  sound 
of  carriage  wheels,  that,  driving  hastily  up,  stop 
at  her  docjr ;  fails,  likewise,  to  hear  the  ring  at 
the  bell,  until  the  entrance  of  a  servant  rouses 
her  to  a  sense  of  the  present  reahties  of  life. 

Carrie  :  '•  I  am  '  not  at  home,'  I  told  you — 
stay,  let  me  see  the  card.  What!  is  it  possible? 
Who  would  have  thought  it?  Show  the  visitor 
up,  directly." 

For  several  moments  after  the  departure  of  the 
bewildered  servant,  Carrie  Flowers  waits,  eager 
impatience  manifest  in  every  feature ;  at  the  end 
of  that  time,  a  soft  rustle  is  heard  without,  the 
door  opens,  she  takes  one  eager  step  forward, 
and  beholds — Manonia. 

kX  last  these  two  women,  so  widely  severed 
yet  so  closely  united,  who  have  suffered  the  same 
sorrows  and  borne  the  same  griefs;  who  have 
laid,  in  the  long  ago,  at  the  feet  of  one  man  the 
richest  treasures  of  their  hearts,  to  gather  up 
again,  in  weary  bitterness,  their  shattered  frag- 
ments— these  two,  in  all  their  lives  as  far  apart 
as  the  river  from  the  sea,  yet  united  by  the  one 
bond  that  makes  all  the  world  kin — the  bond  of 
suffering — stand  face  to  face. 

Something  else  stands  with  them.  The  mem- 
ories of  the  long  ago  rise  and  confront  them. 
Their  long  past  dreams,  their  hopes,  their  sor- 
row's— with  one  man's  face,  and  one  man's  voice, 
and  the  bittersweet  recollections  of  one  man's 
memory,  and  what  it  has  been  to  each. 

It  is  too  much.  All  barriers  are  swept  away, 
all  distance  removed — sisters  in  suffering,  com- 
panions in  sorrow,  the  arms  of  one  open,  and  the 
Avcury,  tired  head  of  the  other  finds  a  resting- 
place  upon  her  breast. 

Carrie:  "  My  poor  sister  !  There  is  no  need 
for  me  to  tell  you  how  I  feel  for  you — when 
hearts  speak  to  hearts,  the  lips  can  remain 
silent." 

Manonia  :  "  Oh,  thank  you — thank  you !  I 
did  not  expect  this  welcome.  I  was  afraid  I  had 
not  done  wisely  in  coming.     It  may  mean " 

Carrie:  " That  you,  in  your  loving-kindness, 
would  not  send  hope,  but  hrought  it.  That  the 
man  who  fancies  his  sin  so  grievous  that  it  is 
past  pardon — who  has  so  bitterly  crushed  a  wo- 


302 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


man's  heart  that  he  would  deem  it  folly  and 
madness  to  ask  that  woman  ever  to  find  a  place 
in  that  heart  again  for  him — will  bless  her  to  the 
last  hour  of  the  last  day  of  the  life  that  God  will 
give  him,  and,  if  she  can  trust  him  once  more,  will 
render  her  reward  as  great  as  he  has  rendered 
her  sufferings — this  is  what  it  means." 

Manonia :  "Ah,  if  I  could  but  believe  it!  But 
so  many  dreams  of  mine  have  been  shattered ;  so 
many  foundation  stones  of  hope  have  fallen,  that 
I  am  afraid — afraid  to  build  again.  I  have  been 
in  the  night  so  long,  that  the  light  which  you 
tell  me  is  so  near,  blinds  me.  I  cannot  believe 
that  the  world,  for  me,  holds  any  light." 

Carrie  :  "  Ah,  but,  my  sister,  the  radiance  is 
glorious.  No  shadows  of  the  past  are  so  dark 
that  its  gleam  will  not  dispel  them,  its  bright 
beams  warm  them — the  light  that  '  never  yet  was 
on  sea  or  land' — God's  hght  of  love. 

Manonia  :  "  If  he  but  loves  me^ah,  a  woman 
can  forgive  so  much  when  she  loves,  and  knows 
that  the  sinner  holds  her  dear !  " 

Carrie:  "  If  he  were  but  here  now,  you  should 
doubt  no  longer.  Oh,  if  he  were  but  here !  Hark, 
what  is  that?  Oh,  joy,  it  is  liis  ring;  I  know  it ! 
He  is  coming  up.  Quick,  quick;  hide  behind  this 
curtain.  You  will  know  when  to  reveal  yourself. 
Oh!  was  Fortune  evermore  propitious?  What 
a  blessed,  blessed  night  this  stormy  eve  will 
prove!  " 

As  Garland  Cloud  enters  the  room,  Carrie 
Flowers  re-seats  herself  in  the  easy  chair  as  com- 
posedly as  the  nature  of  the  circumstances  will 
allow,  at  the  same  time  saying:  "This  is  indeed 
an  agreeable  surprise.  I  did  not  dream  that  I 
was  to  be  rendered  happy  by  a  call  from  you  this 
evening." 

Cloud  :  "  And  I  did  not  dream  of  coming,  but 

well,  I  am  afi-aid,   Carrie,  that  I  have  the 

blues,  and " 

Carrie  :  "  You  thought  of  me  as  an  antidote. 
Quite  right;  I  shall  exert  myself  to  the  utmost. 
If  you  are  not  cheered  to-night,  I  shall  despair  of 
your  ever  being  rendered  happy  in  this  life,  since 
you  so  absolutely  refuse  the  only  other  available 
means  offered." 

Cloud  :  "  Carrie,  I  beg  of  you,  do  not  broach 
that  topic.  I  do  not  desire  to  listen,  will  not  listen. 


I  have  multiplied  wrong  with  wrong,  and  my  life 
has  been  one  long  catalogue  of  errors,  but  I  will 
not  add  this  great  evil-doing  to  the  list." 

Carrie  :  "  Then  you  obstinately  refuse  to  seek 
comfort  in  the  smiles  of  any  woman  ?  " 

Cloud  :  "  No  woman's  smiles  can  comfort  me 
while  I  rernember  Manonia's  tears.  And  to  the 
day  of  my  death,  the  memory  of  those  bitter  drops 
my  evil  life  and  many  sins  have  caused  to  flow, 
will  not  forsake  me. 

— ^When  we  hold  a  woman's  heart  in  our  hands, 
and  crush  it  and  fling  it  from  us,  leaving  it  bleed- 
ing among  the  thorns  on  the  dusty  road-side  of 
life;  when  we  guide  her  ship  of  happiness  among 
the  breakers,  and  set  it  adrift  on  a  boundless  sea 
that  has  no  haven  of  peace  nor  shores  of  safety, 
what  man  can  go  back  to  a  woman  then  and  say : 
'  Forgive  me ;  your  heart  is  broken ;  your  life 
is  wrecked;  your  peace  destroyed,  but  forgive 
me? ' " 

Carrie  :  "  Where  a  woman  loves,  it  is  easy  to 
forgive." 

Cloud  :  "  But  where  the  hope,  the  happiness, 
the  heart,  is  dead,  love  perishes  among  the  ruins." 

"And  rises  from  the  ruins,  and  lives — -for&verV 

This  last  sentence  was  uttered  by  an  invisible 
speaker,  or  one  who  was  thus  when  Cloud  en-  _ 
tered  the  room.  At  the  sound  of  another  voice, 
a  voice  often  heard,  bitterly  mourned,  well  re- 
membered. Garland  Cloud  turns.  Is  it  a  dream  ? 
Standing  before  him,  her  hands  extended  toward 
him,  her  beautiful  eyes  gleaming  with  the  bright- 
ness of  unshed  tears,  her  pale,  sad  face  turned 
to  greet  him  in  mute  appeal,  divine  forgiveness, 
pathetic  loveliness,  is  Manonia. 

He  stands  as  if  transfixed  to  the  spot,  dazed  by 
a  wonder  that  he  cannot  fathom,  fearing  to  speak 
lest -the  vision  might  vanish;  and  the  vision,  taking 
one  nearer  step  to  him,  softly  says :  "  I  have  come 
to  tell  you  that  I  forgive  you.  I  have  come  to 
give  my  life  into  your  hands  as  trustingly  as  I 
once  gave  it  in  the  long  ago.  Ah,  Garland,  the 
heart  I  gave  you  then  was  young  and  untried,  and 
the  one  I  offer  you  now  is  crushed  and  broken, 
but  it  is  yours ;  take  it,  or  reject  it,  what  you  will." 

Cloud  :   "  Manonia — my  wife  !  " 

As  his  arm  closes  about  her,  and  her  head  finds 
the  resting-place  it  never  should  have  lost,  that. 


EIGHTEEN  YEARS  AFTER. 


tlirough  weal  or  woe,  in  all  the  life  to  come,  it 
Avill  never  lose  again,  Carrie  Flowers,  the  woman 
who  loved  this  man  once,  and  who  suffered  for 
his  sake,  rises  and  moves  softly  from  the  room. 

All  Is  forgiven;  we  have  waited  long 
And  suffered  much— yet  all  is  for  the  best; 
And  Love  can  par<lon  many  a  grievoifs  wrong, 
And  lay  Its  trust  in  Heaven  for  the  rest. 


CHAPTER  LXXVI. 

EIGHTEEN     YEARS     AFTER. 

"  My  task  Is  done,  my  song  hath  ceased,  my  theme 
Has  died  into  an  echo ;  it  is  fit 
The  spell  should  break  of  this  protracted  dream; 
The  torch  shall  be  extinguished  which  hath  lit 
My  midnight  lamp,  and  what  is  writ  Is  writ; 
Would  that  it  was  worthier ;  but  I  am  not  now 
That  which  I  have  been,  and  my  visions  flit 
Less  palpably  before  me ;  and  the  glow 
Which  in  my  spirit  dwelt.  Is  fluttering  low. 
***** 
Farewell !  a  word  that  must  be,  and  hath  been; 
A  sound  which  makes  us  linger ;  yet— Farewell  1 " 
—Byron. 

Eighteen  years  after !  What  a  deep  and 
significant  meaning  this  term  implies!  What 
memories  it  conjures  up  before  the  minds  of 
Americans !  How  the  thoughts  travel  back  to 
dwell  upon  that  by-gone  time  I  What  sad  days 
of  emotions,  mingling  with  sorrow,  rejoicing  and 
mourning,  ot  discord,  desolation,  poverty  and 
despair!  The  South,  mourning  over  her  baffled 
zeal,  her  "Lost  Cause,"  her  perished  hopes,  her 
ruined  homes,  her  fallen  sons!  The  victorious 
legions  of  the  vanquishers,  and  the  triumphant 
North,  rejoicing  over  the  success  of  the  Govern- 
ment cause.  A  nation  mourning  over  the  bier 
of  her  "Martyred  President!  " 

Eighteen  years  after  the  Civil  War;  eighteen 
years  after  the  deluging  torrents  of  human  blood 
— a  country's  mad  attempt  at  fratricide ;  and 
eighteen  yeai's  after  tlj;^  fiendish  severing  of 
Lawrence  Pleasington  arid  Effie  Edelstein. 

Since  then,  the  sweeping  surge  of  time  has 
rolled  on,  and  submerged,  in  eternal  oblivion, 
much  that  vexed  and  troubled  mankind  in  that 
trying  time  of  "  the  long  ago."  As  we  look  back 
upon  the  hideous  aspect  of  that  ghastly  picture — 


now  gaze,  half  doubting  we  are  dreaming,  at  the 
portrait  standing  out  before  us  in  bold  relief  to- 
day— we  are  dumb  with  amazement  and  paralyzed 
with  electrifying  admiration. 

What  wonderful  changes  the  hand  of  Time 
has  wrought !  Astonishing  has  been  the  healing 
powers  of  the  antidote  administered  by  this  silent 
physician ! 

How  it  has  soothed  and  cured  the  rJmkling 
hate,  the  devastating  ravages,  the  aching  hearts, 
and  the  gaping  wounds  of  war  !  • 

"  Oh,  Time !  thou  beautlfler  of  the  dead ; 
Adorner  of  the  ruin,  comforter. 
And  only  healer  when  the  heart  hath  bled ; 

Tims— the  corrector,  where  our  judgments  err— 
Test  of  truth,  love,  sole  philosopher—" 

To-day,  we  glance  back  at  the  ruined  walls 
and  the  broken  columns  of  strife,  decaying  and 
crumbling  to  dust.  Amid  these  vanishing  monu- 
ments of  mortal  combat,  which  once  "  shadowed 
forth  their  glory,"  may  be  seen,  now  and  then,  a 
feeble,  tottering,  grim  sentinel,  still  guarding  his 
cherished  prejudices  and  his  treasured  hate.  But 
these  misguided  minds  the  benignant  hand  of 
Time  is  steadily  relieving  from  the  onerous  posts 
of  their  fond  and  self-chosen  charge — mistaken 
duty's  non-definable  trust.  Around  these  dis- 
cordant characters  a  new  generation  has  sprung 
up,  to  whom  the  war  is  a  legendary  story,  and 
upon  whom  their  influence  makes  not  the  slight- 
est impression  in  the  direction  of  keeping  alive 
the  fire-brands  of  hate.  The  battle  storm-rent 
plains  and  fields  of  this  once  distracted  country 
are  again  verdant,  blooming,  and  fruitful  over 
the  dreary  wastes  of  brooding  desolation  and 
ensanguined  destruction. 

From  this  general  declaration,  we  reserve  one 
exception ;  and  we  are  constrained  to  admit  that 
it  is  appropriate  that  this  should  exist.  We  seek 
in  vain  for  brightness  or  loveliness  on  the  thresh- 
old, or  within  the  arena,  where  was  ushered  forth 
the  first  world-startling  scene  m  the  tragic  drama. 
These  cheering  rays  illuminate  not  the  sombre 
ruins  of  Fort  Sumpter.  Forever  should  it  stand 
enveloped  in  its  ghastly  shroud — a  waste  howling 
wilderness  of  eternal  desolation — as  an  admonitory 
monument  to  posterity,  in  commemoration  of  the 
scourging  curse  of  civil  war.     The  unpropitious 


304 


MYSTIC   ROMANCES   OF  THE  BLUE  AND   THE   GREY. 


cradle  of  the  Coufederacy,  it  should  ever  remain 
her  sohtary  grave.  Above  these  sea-girt,  sand- 
capped  ruins  of  once  frovs'ning  battlements,  the 
plaintive  wave  murmurs  its  sad  refrain,  the  cur- 
lew chants  her  mournful  melody  in  discordant 
strains — meet  music  for  this  desolate  relic  of  the 
Atlantic's  once-dreaded  child. 

But  from  this,  we  follow  the  wild  course  of  the 
bloody*  conflict,  as  it  rushed  onward  over  the 
country  in  one  engulfing  wave  of  destruction, 
and  find  little  remaining  to  indicate  the  traces  of 
its. ravages,  save  alone  those  mournful  "Cities  of 
the  Dead,"  where, 

"  On  Fame's  eternal  camping  ground, 
Our  nightly  tents  are  spread; 
And  Silence  guards  with  solemn  round, 
The  bivouac  of  the  dead." 

The  wasted  fences  have  been  replaced ;  the 
orchards  replanted;  the  fields  restocked  with 
their  lowing  herds;  the  ruined  homesteads  resur- 
rected from  their  smoldering  ashes;  the  destroyed 
cities  rebuilt.  Long-flown  prosperity  has  returned 
to  hover  again  in  benign  graciousness  over  the 
valleys,  and  to  rest  once  more  in  blessed  peace 
upon  the  misty  summits  of  the  mountains.  The 
yawning,  bloody  chasm,  that  once  appeared  so 
fathomless  and  impassable,  has  been  bridged  by 
fraternal  bonds,  cemented  with  the  adhesive 
tenacity  of  common  interest  and  brotherhood. 

From  Plymouth's  gale-lashed  spray 
To  San  Francisco's  placid  bay; 
From  Biscayene's  tropic  sand 
To  Alaska's  frozen  strand, 

good  will,  prosperity  and  peace  reign  over  a 
regenerated  and  an  everlasting  Union — a  free  and 
mighty  people.  Even  the" fierce  animosity  grow- 
ing out  of  the  petty  bickerings  and  blunders  of 
reconstruction  folly,  has  yielded  to,  and  been  dis- 
sipated by,  the  harmonizing  influence  of  more  in- 
timate relations  and  a  closer  acquaintance  between 
the  people  of  the  once  antagonistical  sections. 

The  great  exhibitions  and  fairs,  together  with 
numerous  military  visits,  have  done  much  in  the 
direction  of  restoring  fraternal  harmony  and  mu- 
tual confidence  between  the  people  of  the  North 
and  the  South.  The  attractions  of  the  Southern 
climate,  as  a  refuge  from  the  cold  blasts  of  a 
Northern  winter,  have  exercised  a  wonderful  in- 


fluence, tending  to  generate  a  spirit  of  concilia- 
tion between  the  people  of  the  former  hostile 
sections,  thus  happily  drawn  together.  Each  vis- 
itor carries  back  with  him  to  his  Northern  home 
a  more  favorable  impression  of  his  hosts  and  their 
country  than  he  entertained  before  his  sojourn 
beneath  thfiir  sunn;;^  skies.  This  sentiment  he 
disseminates  among  his  friends,  and  thus  are 
seeds  of  pacification  quietly,  imperceptibly,  but 
steadily  and  surely  sown;  and  noiselessly  they 
produce  and  mature  their  fruits.  All  these  good 
works  deserve  to  be  extended,  fostered,  and  en- 
couraged ;  because  they  create  the  fraternal  and 
accordant  bonds  of  a  common,  re-united  country. 

The  greatest  misfortune  that  yet  remains  to 
disturb  the  placid  serenity  of  the  peaceful  waters, 
is  the  malignant  misrepresentations  made  by 
scheming  and  unscrupulous  politicians  in  the 
heated  turmoil  and  fanatical  excitement  of  an 
active  campaign.  Thus  are  false  impressions  of 
a  damaging  character  scattered  broadcast  over 
the  land.  As  a  rule  these  stories  are  utterly  un- 
worthy of  credit.  At  such  seasons,  honest  and 
impartial  missionaries  should  be  sent  into  the 
Southern  States  to  procure  and  publish  the  legiti- 
mate truth. 

In  this  way  might  much  needless  discord  and 
bitterness  be  averted.  Between  the  great  masses 
of  the  two  sections  of  this  once  distracted  coun- 
try an  ardent  desire  for  harmony  has  long  ex- 
isted. Wrangling  politicians  alone  marred  and 
delayed  the  happy  consummation  of  this  most 
desirable  state  of  tranquility.  But  the  day  has 
gone  by  when  they  enjoyed  unlimited  creative 
powers  of  mischief.  Their  influence  must  grow 
less  as  the  years  vanish. 

The  wearers  of  the  Grey,  if  mistaken,  were 
honest  in  their  convictions.  They  staked  their 
principles  in  the  desperate  game  of  war,  and  lost. 

Thus  they  proved  their  professions.  They  are 
none  the  less  honest  now ;  none  the  less  have 
they  forcibly  demonstrated  their  abiding  fidelity 
to  the  Union  and  the  principles  maintained  by 
the  wearers  of  the  Blue — their  magnanimous  foe- 
men — by  their  zealous  efforts  to  fill  up  and  bridge 
over  the  bloody  chasm.  Beneath  the  dreamland 
skies  of  the  South  no  traitors  dwell. 

The   wearers   of   the"  Blue  never  pursued  the 


EIGHTEEN  YEARS  AFTER. 


305 


wearersof  the  Grey  beyond  the  battlefield ;  never 
stooped  to  persecute  the  vanquished  with  need- 
less oppression.  These  antagoni.sts  alone,  undis- 
turbed by  "bomb-proof"  politicians  of  the  '^ stay 
at  home  corps"  could  have  settled  the  difficult 
problem  in  short  order  at  any  time,  had  it  been 
submitted  to  them  as  peaceable  arbitrators.  They 
are  now,  and  have  been  for  many  years,  thus  set- 
tling it  through  the  influence  of  organized  inter- 
course in  the  semblance  of  formal  and  most  ap- 
propriate mihtary  visits,  and  in  many  other  ways, 
laying  the  broad  foundation  for  everlasting  friend- 
ship. Thus  have  a  nation's  woes  and  a  nation's 
rankling  hate  been  alleviated  and  neutralized. 

The  "fire-eaters"  and  the  fanatics  who  kindled 
that  red  flame  of  war  are  rapidly  making  their 
final  exits  from  the  stage ;  and  their  ultra  doc- 
trines are  giving  place  to  equitable  ideas  of  pa- 
cific moderation,  implacable  enemies  of  the 
early  days  of  reconstruction  are  amicable  friends. 
As  the  people  of  the  two  great  sections  come  to 
know  and  understand  one  another  Ijetter,  the 
more  still  will  their  fraternal  bonds  be  strength- 
ened. Every  week,  almost,  ushers  in  some  new 
era  of  influences  or  associations,  tending  to  pro- 
mote good  feeling  and  to  generate  solid  and  en- 
during friendship  among  the  people  of  the  "New 
Union." 

The  terms  "The  Sohd  South"  and  "The  New 
South"  are  misconstrued  and  misunderstood :  in 
the  first  instance,  by  designing  sycoi^hants;  in 
the  second,  by  the  great  masses  of  the  Northern 
people.  A  broad  and  liberal  construction  of  the 
true  definition  implies  simply  "A  New  and  Solid 
Union."  Where  would  rest  the  secure  founda- 
tion of  this  nation's  hope  without  "  A  New  and 
Solid  South  ?"  On  treacherous  quicJcsands.  In 
"The  New  South"  the  emancipated  slave  and 
the  master  of  the  olden  time  dwell  and  labor  in 
mutual  harmony.  Thus  is  the  supreme  object  of 
the  war  attained  —  the  ultimate  principles  of 
aboHtionism  secured.  That  this  was  the  real 
bone  of  contention  over  which  the  spirit  of  war 
was  generated,  no  intelligent  and  well-informed 
mind  can  hesitate  to  admit ;  that,  sooner  or  later, 
it  must  have  inevitably  led  to  open  hostilities, 
there  is  no  room  to  doubt;  and  that  it  was  infi- 
nitely better  for  these  to  have  developed  when 


they  did,  rather  than  to  have  been  reserved  for  a 
future  age  and  a  more  numerous  people,  there  is 
still  less  reason  in  favor  of  a  judgment.  Hence, 
therefore,  we  conclude  that  the  war,  under  the 
peculiar  nature  of  the  circumstances,  was  an  evil 
that  could  not  have  been  averted;  a  thing  neces- 
sary to  preserve  and  indissolubly  cement  the  ac- 
cordant ties  of  the  Union. 

Now  the  grand  object  and  the  supreme  soHci- 
tude  of  the  people  of  this  nation  should  be  to  se- 
cure the  utmost  fruits  of  their  gigantic  sacrifices, 
and  to  make  doubly  sure  that  such  fruits  are  not 
blighted  or  destroyed.  No  effort  should  be 
spared  that  promises  to  promote  their  cultivation. 
Increased  intercourse  and  more  intimate  relations 
between  the  sections  once  so  widely  severed  by 
the  scourge  of  murderous  strife,  would  most  tend 
to  secure  this  desirable  and  happy  consummation. 
Thorough  acquaintance  with  the  South  and  her 
people  are  too  important  considerations  to  be 
approximately  estimated.  Equally  important  is 
it  for  the  Southern  to  know  their  Northern  coun- 
trymen. These,  all  the  citizens  of  the  Union 
should  mutunlly,  carefully  and  patiently  study, 
learn  duly  to  understand,  and  strive  properly  to 
appreciate.  By  such  means  would  the  trophies 
of  triumph  be  secured,  and  the  laureled  wreath 
and  olive  branch  of  peace  entwined  and  estab- 
lished/or evermore. 

The  witching  magnetism  of  the  fertile  fields 
and  the  salubrious  enchantment  of  the  matchless 
chme  of  the  South  are  attracting  myriads  of 
people  away  from  their  ice-bound  winters  of  the 
North.  Fascinated  by  these  charming  beauties 
and  wondrous  bounties  of  lavishly  generous 
nature,  many  become  permanently  domiciled  in 
this  lovely  land,  and  induce  friends  to  join  them 
in  tlieir  semi-Paradise  on  earth. 

As  the  South  is  the  land  of  flowers,  so  is  it  the 
cradle  of  love.  And  those  who  winter  there  c^r 
migrate  thither  to  remain,  are  sure  to  fall  in  love 
with  the  climate  and  the  country,  and  hence,  too, 
with  the  people.  They  too,  in  their  turn,  learn 
to  love  their  Northern  visitors  and  neighbors. 
Thus,  this  intermingling  is  Avoiding  the  links  of  a 
fraternal  chain  as  solid  and  as  durable  as  adamant. 

Let  those  who  wish  to  know  the  "True 
South"   "The'  New   South"   and   "The   SoUd 


ZOG 


jviystic  romances  of  the  blue  and  the  geey. 


South,"  of  1883,  vividly  contrasted  with  "the 
decimated,  the  desolate,  the  ruined  South  of 
1865,"  enter  the  Valley  of  Virginia — the  garden 
spot  of  America — and  proceed  Soutji  to  Salem ; 
then  traverse  the  majestic  mountains  to  the  blue 
hills  of  the  Southwest,  return  to  Lynchburg,  and 
travel  down  the  James  River  to  Richmond  and 
Noi-folk. 

From  this  point  penetrate  North  CaroHna  to 
Ashville,  amid  the  misty  peaks  of  the  Blue 
Ridge.  Thence  scan  the  smiling  gardens  and 
the  rice  plantations  of  South  Carolina;  the 
mystic  mountains  and  magic  vales  of  Tennessee. 
NoAv  look  over  the  cotton  wonderlands  of  Ala- 
bama and  Mississippi,  of  Louisiana  and  Arkansas, 
with  their  sugar,  rice  and  wheat  fields ;  the  pro- 
digious amazements  of  Texas,  too  vast  and  too 
diversified  to  be  enumerated  or  indicated. 

Then  go  to  Atlanta,  and  gaze  down  in  admira- 
tion upon  the  astonishing  panorama  of  Georgia, 
— the  New  England,  the  Empire  State  of  the 
South,  in  enterprise — elaborately  dispersed,  and  in 
material  pro.sperity.  Thence  go  to  Florida,  the 
winter  garden  of  the  North,  the  Italy  of 
America. 

If,  in  all  this  vast  and  varied  domain,  nothing 
has  been  found  to  attract  emigration  and  to  in- 
duce settlement  as  permanent  residents,  the 
tastes  of  the  seekers  would  be  too  fastidious  to 
be  satisfied  anywhere  in  this  world. 

The  known  resources  of  the  South  are  too 
formidable  to  be  computed;  the  undeveloped 
ones  are  too  incredible  to  be  comprehended. 
Hence,  she  offers  unparalleled  inducements  to 
emigrants  from  all  sections  of  the  Union,  and 
from  every  quarter  of  the  globe.  People  the 
South,  develop  her  resources,  and  there  will  be 
the  mainspring  of  prosperity,  the  mighty  right 
arm  of  the  Nation. 

A  beautiful  example  of  reconciliation  is  afforded 
by  the  devoted  relations  and  boundless  friendship 
early  established  and  uninterruptedly  main- 
tained among  Edgar  Harman,  Jesse  Flowers, 
Orlando  Oglethrop,  their  wives,  Lawrence 
Pleasington  and  some  of  their  friends. 

These  reflections  lead  us  back  again  in  the 
direction  of  the  thread  of  romance  in  our  story. 
Our  rambles  away  have  merely  led  over  much  of 


the  same  ground  upon  which  our  early  and  pro- 
gressive scenes  developed — simply  a  casual  and 
somewhat  informal  review  of  the  transformation 
wrought  by  these  changing  scenes,  and  the  magic 
touch  of  the  hand  of  Time.  Out  of  the  war  and 
in  its  wake,  as  resultant  sequences,  grew  most  of 
the  features  of  our  story ;  then,  therefore,  it  can 
hardly  be  deemed  inappropriate  that  we  have 
sketched  various  outlines  of  its  material  effects, 
beyond  the  individuality  of  our  legitimate  char- 
acters. Whatever  effected  these,  as  to  their 
ordinary  affairs  of  life,  operated  in  a  greater  or  a 
less  degree,  or  might  have  thus  influenced  many 
other  persons — the  generality  of  the  masses  of 
the  American  people. 

We  have  wandered  over  a  romantic  country,  the 
stage  of  wild  and  tragic  scenes.  The  vicissitudes 
of  recuperation  through  which  the  Southern 
States  and  people  have  passed,  are  replete  with 
startling  and  pathetic  romance — struggling  with 
dire  poverty  amid  the  sombre  shadows  of  de- 
spair, cheered  on  and  strengthened  by  self-abne- 
gating devotion,  alone,  and  seemingly  estranged 
forever  from  the  realm  of  Hope. 

Ah,  what  treasures  of  romance,  in  real  life. 
those  distressed  old  mountains  and  desolate  val- 
leys, as  they  were  in  those  dark  days  of  yore, 
hold  hidden  away  in  their  secret  vaults  of  mys- 
teries! Some  day  we  ma}''  enter  and  explore 
a  few  of  these  musty  recesses,  bring  to  the  light  of 
the  sun  their  guarded  treasures,  and  portray  their 
mystic  wonders.  Until  then,  indulgent  friends, 
we  crave  your  forbearance  for  having  made  any 
semblance  of  digression.  Pray  attribute  this  to 
our  zeal  in  the  cause  of  reconciliation,  and  our 
overweening  desire  to  promote  national  harmony 
between  the  people  of  the  North  and  South. 
We  deem  it  the  duty  of  every  one  to  put  forth 
some  effort,  however  feeble,  in  this  direction; 
hence  our  simple  attempt. 

We  noAv  glance  in  retrospection,  along  the 
backward  track,  over  the  course  of  our  stor}',  in 
its  tortuous  meanderings,  briefly  to  summarize; 
bind  the  fibres  broken  now  and  then,  under  the 
pressure  of  the  concentrated  friction  of  time  and 
circumstance  ;  resume  the  readjusted  thread  of 
our  vanishing  theme  and  pursue  it  to  that  scene 
which  is  to  be  its  last. 


EIGHTEEN  YEARS  AFTER. 


307 


This  might  not  be  be  thus,  were  our  chronicles 
posted  up  to  1893,  instead  of  1883.  But  to  the 
latter  epoch  has  it  led  us;  beyond  this  fate 
interposes  the  stern  interdiction  that  says,  "No 
farther."  Here  must  we  halt.  We  dare  not 
conjecture  even  what  scenes  are  yet  behind  the 
mysterious  curtain  of  futurity,  that  may  develop 
sometime,  with  one  or  more  of  our  characters  as 
participating  actors  on  the  stage  where  they 
liave  played  so  long.  Earnestly  do  we  wish  that 
wo  could  seize  the  prophet's  divining  ken,  and 
read  but  this  once  the  future  pages  of  some 
lives.  Alas!  we  cannot;  nor  can  we  trust  the 
perversity  of  human  nature  sufficiently  to  imag- 
ine what  these  singular  charac'r.rs  may  yet 
tlemonstrate,  to  startle  and  shock,  or  to  excite 
admiration  in  the  minda  of  mankind.  We  must, 
therefore,  rest  satisfied,  or  not,  with  what  we 
have,  and  submit  simply  what  has  been  and  is  in 
our  portrait.  The  inquisitive  and  the  captious 
can  expect  no  more. 

Following  each  individual  feature,  as  it  is 
traced  along  its  course,  and  gauging  it  by  the 
most  rigid  rules  of  the  philosophy  of  "  cause 
and  effect,"  we  find  we  have  advanced  nothing 
that  these  do  not  imperatively  demand.  If  we 
have  erred  in  this  respect,  it  has  not  been  on  the 
side  of  over-elaborate  outlining,  but  rather  in  the 
direction  of  concession.  Our  aim  has  been  to 
keep  ideas  of  personality  of  the  author  in  the 
back-ground,  and  to  demonstrate  absolute  de- 
velopments. Hence,  will  be  observed  our  often 
abrupt  transition  of  scenes,  with  almost  no  pre- 
liminary comments 

We  are  most  sensible  that  this  is  a  departure 
from  the  beaten  tract — what  many  style  "  out  of 
the  common ;  "  yet  we  are  persuaded  that  it  Avill 
prove  a  not  unacceptable  departure,  with  the 
majority  of  readers  of  refined  taste.  Such  readers, 
as  a  rule,  if  interested  in  a  work  at  all,  find  their 
interest,  not  in  the  author  nor  in  his  abstract  opin- 
ions, but  in  his  characters,  and  what  they  do  and 
say.  The  description  of  characters,  often  most 
elaborate  delineations,  even,  may  be  quite  accept- 
able to  the  average  reader  of  refinement,  when 
the  author's  egotistical  opinion  simply,  to  the 
same  extent,  in  the  same  direction,  might  prove 
a  reading  extremely  irksome. 


In  unmeasured  terms,  sometimes,  have  we  de- 
nounced or  praised;  but  not  usually  have  we 
thus  indulged  at  great  length ;  and  almost  always, 
these  efforts  were  more  than  semi-descriptive  of 
features  of  vice  or  virtue,  or  their  fruits,  insepar- 
able from  the  roles  and  the  lives  of  our  characters. 

We  have  been  unable  to  resist  the  temptation, 
when  some  intensified  scenes  were  nearing,  or 
had  seemingly  reached  their  chmax,  to  suspend 
their  ultimate  sequences  in  abeyance ;  but  in  no 
instance  have  we  failed  to  develop  these  in  a  later 
period. 

Thus  have  we  sought  to  hold  in  reserve  some 
unexpected  surprises.  How  far  we  have  been 
successful  in  this  direction,  the  reader  alone  must 
render  a  verdict. 

As  to  other  irregularities  and  imperfections,  we 
can  offer  no  specia-I  apology.  We  have  meant 
to  instruct,  with  pictured  lessons  from  earn  ate  life, 
rather  than  to  amuse  with  a  pleasing  vein  of  humor. 
We  make  no  sort  of  pretentions  to  a  claim  of 
literary  merit  for  this  work.  Such  would  be  ab- 
surd. We  have  tried  to  tell  our  story  with  sim- 
plicity, as  we  progressed  with  timid  inexperience. 
If  we  have  moderately  succeeded  in  the  direction 
of  rendering  it  intelligible,  our  utmost  dreams 
are  attained. 

First  upon  the  stage  was  Garland  Cloud,  the 
obscure  and  youthful  mountaineer,  the  scout  and 
the  erratic  wanderer.  In  him  were  the  natural 
characteristics  requisite  to  assume  the  hazard  of 
adventure,  and  to  blend  with  the  mysterious  and 
the  romantic.  His  alloted  role  led  him  into  startling 
scenes,  where  these  attributes  of  nature  together 
commingled  in  wondrous  harmony. 

But  in  reviewing  the  complete  career  of  this 
strange  and  incomprehensible  character,  in  his  in- 
tensely adhesive  relations  with  the  strongest  fea- 
tures of  romance  in  our  antithetical  portrait  of 
real  life,  we  must  not  ignore  the  potent  influences 
which  thus  bound  and  held  him  so  inseparably. 

Uncle  Jake,  the  old  Virginia,  common-place, 
rollicking  log-cabin  darkey,  was  the  supreme 
genius,  the  pecuHar  founder,  the  wonderful  arch- 
itect and  the  untutored  creator  from  whom, 
directly,  or  indirectly,  as  resultant  elements  of  the 
developing  theme,  in  the  inexplicable  order  of 
progression,  all  this  masterful  combination  of  com- 


308 


IVIYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


plot  sprung.  Here  starts  the  mysteriously  unfold- 
ing thread  of  our  singular  story.  This  is  the  primi- 
tive source  of  "  The  Secret  Service  League  '  of  the 
border.  Without  Uncle  Jake,  this  particular  or- 
ganization would  never  have  existed;  M'ithout 
Uncle  Jake,  Qarland  Cloud  never  would  have 
attracted  important  attention  as  a  scout.  I 

The  meeting  of  Garland  Cloud  and  Jesse  Flow- 
ers on  the  field  of  Manassas,  was  an  event  that 
shadowed  forth  in  importance  second  only  to  Jake. 

The  finding  and  caring  for  Lawrence  Pleasing- 
ton  by  those  children  of  the  mountain,  were 
simply  in  seeming  obedience  to  the  directing  fin- 
ger of  Destiny.  In  this  relation,  as  to  Pleasing- 
ton's  letters,  Jake  again  became  an  indispensable 
actor.  To  these  circumstances  is  due  the  gratitude 
on  the  part  of  Pleasington,  that  generated  the 
strange  sympathy  and  peculiar  friendship  between 
him  and  Cloud;  that  swaj^ed  them  so  strongly  while 
they  were  yet  armed  in  hostility,  and  influenced 
them  so  powerfully  on  other  occasions.  Thus 
were  many  features  of  this  volume  developed. 

Cloud's  service  as  a  scout  and  kindness  to  Ed- 
gar Harman,  were  auxiliary  but  necessary  cir- 
cumstances, required  to  bring  Carrie  Harman . 
upon  the  stage.  This,  and  Jessie  Flowers'  rela- 
tions with  Cloud,  were  indispensable  to  unfold 
the  pathetic  and  starthng  events  developed  in  the 
thrilling  story  of  Gertrude  Flowers.  Thus  was 
she  re-united  with  the  long  severed  links  of  the 
broken  chain  of  the  past ;  thus  was  cast  a  distant 
gleam  of  uncertain  light  upon  the  shadowy  vis- 
age of  Helen  Mountjoy,  and  her  mysterious  re- 
lations with  Ira  Atkinson  and  Adam  Stringfellow ; 
and,  moreover,  thus  was  the  unity  of  relations 
among  these  strong  characters  re-established,  and 
the  true  nature  of  the  wonderful  romance  of 
Mountjoy  House  revealed. 

From  the  very  first  moment  when  she  comes 
into  the  scene,  until  her  last  appearance,  Carrie 
Harman  is  a  star  of  jnatchless  magnetism  and 
powerful  influence.  At  once  she  becomes  the 
inspiration,  the  genius,  the  destiny  of  Garland 
Cloud,  and,  in  turn,  passes,  herself,  under  the 
spell  of  his  unschooled  diplomacy.  Gratitude, 
and  a  spirit  of  pure  romance,  superinduced  her 
admiration  and  esteem  so  inordinately  cherished 
for  the  plebeian  soldier  boy. 


She,  as  we  have  just  demonstrated,  became 
lilended  in  the  plot  as  a  direct  sequence  of  Uncle 
Jake,  in  the  legitimate  Hne  of  offspring — the 
veritable  progeny  issuing  in  strict  pursuance  of 
the  thread  of  fairy  tale.  Beyond,  then,  obtains 
indirect  fruits  from  Jake's  primitive  plant  of 
creation.  Carrie  Harman  becomes  a  creative 
genius  of  thrilling  vicissitudes.  She  propagates, 
cultivates,  and  develops,  in  a  high  degree,  what 
Jake  planted  in  such  simple  crudeness.  Her 
aspirations  were  lofty  and  noble;  her  motives 
and  actions  were  swayed  and  controlled  by  the 
most  worthy  impulses  in  this  world. 

What  she  was  in  the  role  of  purity  and  good- 
ness, Helen  Mountjoy  was  in  that  of  deceit  and 
wickedness.  To  many  persons  Carrie  Harman 
was  a  good  angel  —  to  many  persons  Helen 
Mountjoy  was  an  evil  spirit,  a  fatal  curse.  Her 
first  victim  was  Gertrude  Flowers.  Carrie  Har- 
man proved  to  be  a  ministress  of  mercy  and 
blessing  to  the  poor  widow  and  her  children. 
Next  we  find  Helen  Mountjoy  victimizing  her 
own  family,  and  some  of  her  not  over-scrupulous 
friends.  Finally,  we  witness  her  culminating 
atrocity,  wreaked  with  fiendish  fury,  upon  poor 
Lawrence  Pleasington  and  confiding  Effie  Edel- 
stein.  Then  the  retribution  of  stricken  conscienco 
ultimately  overtakes  and  drives  her  to  the  des- 
peration of  self-destruction. 

Garland  Cloud,  through  indiscretion,  under  the 
fell  sway  of  unscrupulous  impulses,  was  led  and 
driven  into  paths  of  error,  whence  the  charming 
potency  of  Carrie  Harman's  enchanting  influence 
failed  to  beguile  him.  Thus  he  bequeathed  to 
her  the  disconsolate  heritage  of  life-long  disap- 
pointment and  unavailing  regret. 

From  this  wreck  of  that  phantom  ship  of  Carriu 
Harman's  cherished  dreams  and  the  grave  of  Gar- 
land Cloud  s  fondest  hope,  starts  that  ill-starred 
thread  of  Manonia's  fatality. 

From  the  severance  of  this  thread  springs  that 
one  which  iCads  on  to  Garland  Cloud's  retribu- 
tion and  exposure,  and  Lawrence  Pleasington's 
restoration  to  the  friends  of  his  early  years — yes, 
and  to  more  :  Thus  emerged  to  the  light  of  day 
the  material  subject  matter  from  which  this  vol- 
ume was  produced.  Without  the  mutual  remi- 
niscences of  Garland  Cloud  and  Lawrence  Pleas- 


EIGHTEEN  TEARS  AFTER. 


309 


inytoii,  the  thread  of  then-  story  and  its  pecuhar 
relations  never  could  have  been  obtained.  With- 
out the  meeting  of  these  prominent  characters 
"  Under  a  Cloud,"  Lawrence  Pleasington  never 
would  have  learned  that  his  most  devoted  friends 
possessed  the  secret  of  his  innocence,  and  still 
remained  forever  constant  to  him ;  and  hence  he 
would  never  have  been  restored  to  them.  Thus 
to  Lawrence  Pleasington  this  last  act  of  friend- 
ship, received  from  Cloud,  became  the  most  im- 
portant of  any  of  those  acts  so  higlJy  prized  in 
the  past,  because  it  conveyed  an  assurance  more 
precious  than  life  itself,  Avhich  had  before  been 
rescued  from  jeopardy — it  assured  him  that  his  . 
fair  name  was  redeemed  from  the  unjust  stigma 
of  shame. 

The  evil  fruits  springing  from  Arnold  Noel 
have  been  sufficiently  outlined.  They  were 
simply  the  direct  or  the  indirect  productions  of 
Helen  Mountjoy's  scheming  baseness,  and  un- 
toward influence.  With  his  innate  propensities 
for  devious  conduct  stimulated  and  encouraged 
by  the  evil  counsels  of  his  wicked  aunt,  it  was  no 
difficult  matter  for  this  young  villain  to  engage 
in  anything  diabohcal.  His  third  time  in  prison 
for  the  long  term  now  hangs  heavily  with  the 
weight  of  long  and  dreary  years  over  his  head. 
His  father,  mother,  and  two  of  his  sisters  have 
been  borne  to"  the  silent  churchyard,  victims  of 
the  broken  heart,  caused  by  his  yet  unabatable 
perversity. 

The  miscliief  wrought  by  Helen  Mountjoy 
should  be  a  lesson  to  unscrupulous  wives  and 
mothers,  who  scheme  to  consummate  ignoble  de- 
signs without  compunction  or  pity  for  their  acts 
or  their  victims. 

The  career  of  Garland  Cloud  should  be  a  lesson 
to  every  young  and  ambitious  man.  Some  phases 
of  his  distorted  portrait  are  admirable  examples 
worthy  of  emulation ;  others  are  fearful  lessons 
of  terrible  warning.  All  of  these,  in  both  rela- 
tions, have  been  amply  defined — how  they  were 
heterogeneously  and  antithetically  compounded 
from  the  noblest  and  the  basest  influences. 

The  simple  meeting,  as  if  by  hazard,  of  Jake 
and  Cloud,  of  Cloud  and  Flowers,  and  of  these 
and  Pleasington,  insignificant  in  themselves  as- 
sume   great  importance  when    traced    to    their 


resultant  developments.  They  led  to  Carrie  Har- 
man ;  they  led  to  G-ertrude  Flowers  and  Rosalia  ; 
they  led  to  Mountjoy  House  and  the  discovery  of 
its  mysteries  and  their  associate  relations ;  they 
led  to  Silas  Worthington;  they  led  to  the  ro 
mantic,  woeful  and  sadly-fated  love  between 
Cloud  and  Carrie  Harman;  they  led  to  Cloud's 
strange  complications ;  they  led  to  the  restora- 
tion of  her  fortune  to  Gertrude  Flowers,  and  the 
marriage  of  herself  and  Rosalia;  they  led  to  the 
formation  of  the  firm  of  Oglethrop,  Harman  & 
Co. ;  they  led  to  Garland  Cloud's  downfall,  flight 
and  checkered  career;  they  led  to  the  union  be- 
tween Jesse  Flowers  and  Carrie  Harman ;  and, 
finally,  they  led  to  the  foundation  cf  most  of 
these  chapters,  and  to  the  composition  of  them 
all. 

Before  passing  definitely  on  to  the  resume  of 
the  incompleted  thread  of  our  narrative,  let  us 
pause  a  moment  in  final  review. 

Look  back  at  Gertrude  Flowers,  preparing  to 
leave  her  palatial  home;  harken  to  the  lonely 
widow's  pitiful  moans  of  desolate  despair,  borne, 
on  many  a  cold  and  dreary  night,  from  her  lonely 
mountain  cabin  home,  upon  the  tempest's  breath, 
to  the  Avenger's  ear ;  think  of  Maud  Pleasing- 
ton's  overpowcMug  agony,  and  Effie  Edelstein's 
mournful  despair,  as  you,  in  fancy,  follow  Law- 
rence Pleasington  through  his  dreary  years  of 
hopeless  wretchedness;  behold  frail  Beatrice  and 
Rosahnd  flying  from  the  ghost  of  their  shame  to 
the  protective  seclusion  of  a  convent,  in  obedience 
to  the  advice  of  Cassandra,  their  conscience- 
stricken  sister;  then  turn  to  the  desolate  home  of 
Samuel  Van  Allen,  and  see  the  despair  of  the 
dying  wife  and  daughter  ;  now  look  back  at  the 
slow  torture  of  Norman  Mountjoy,  and  stand 
again  with  him  a  moment  in  that  chamber  of 
death,  before  taking  a  last,  lingering  gaze  at  the 
authoress  of  all  this  woe  and  premature  death — 
Helen  Mountjoy — as  she,  in  terror,  is  confessing 
to  her  daughter  Evahna. 

From  these  scenes  of  death-producing  misery, 
turn  to  Garland  Cloud's  last  Sabbath  evening  in 
his  "  Future  City  "  mansion;  then  to  his  dream  of 
death;  now  to  the  nameless  despair  of  Manonia; 
then,  again,  to  the  lonely  cell  in  which  he  finds 
that  the  mask  has  been  torn  from  his  face  and 


310 


MYSTIC   ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


life.  Think  a  moment  of  the  heart-aches  he  has 
left  behind  him  in  traversing  the  earth,  and 
those  he  has  borne  onward  with  himself.  Con- 
trast all  these  with  the  rewards  of  virtue  and 
truth  reaped  by  Harman,  Flowers  and  Oglethrop, 
with  their  angelic  wives,  and  conclude  which  are 
the  most  desirable  to  pursue  and  to  possess. 

Again  we  resume  the  thread  of  our  story.  To 
this,  Lawrence  Pleasington  still  chngs,  or,  per- 
haps, it  adheres  to  him.  His  role  is  yet  incom- 
plete. We  have  to  follow  him  into  some  unde- 
veloped scenes — scenes  which  should  be  clothed 
with  absorbing  interest. 

Lawrence  Pleasington  has  been  a  not  uninter- 
esting character.  Lawrence  Pleasington  is  the 
more  than  ideal  character—he  is  the  sublime  hero, 
matchless,  unapproachable,  admirable  man !  Un- 
rivaled child  of  resignation,  constancy,  and  devo- 
tion !  To  thee  we  can  impute  no  fault,  lay  no 
stigma  upon  thy  untarnished  name.  Pleasing, 
at  last,  becomes  our  task,  to  bring  thee  forward, 
free  from  and  untrammeled  by  the  machinations 
of  evil  influence,  secure  from  their  menace,  and 
place  thee  upon  the  stage  in  thy  own  element  of 
truth  and  purity. 

How  beautiful,  how  noble,  hoy  exemplary  the 
life  of  this  man  has  ever  been,  amid  trial,  perse- 
cution, and  temptation  that  were  overwhelming. 
Upon  his  well-poised  mind  and  disciplined  virtue, 
the  intoxicating  whirl  and  black  demoralization 
that  ran  riot  in  the  mad  excitement  of  war,  made 
no  impressions,  but  those  of  loathing  and  abhor- 
rence. "When  the  blighting  pall  of  suspicion, 
misfortune,  and  despair  overshadowed  him,  and 
hope  fled,  seemingly,  forever,  he  yet  remains  a 
true  man.  Courageously  he  bf  aves  the  worst  and 
the  most  dreadful  fate  ever  wreaked  upon  an  inno- 
cent man,  to  which  death,  in  any  form  of  torture, 
slow  or  swift,  would  have  been  a  welcome  mercy 
— an  inestimable  blessing. 

After  all  that  he  has  endured,  he  certainly  de- 
serves a  meritorious  reward.  If  this  be  not  ac- 
corded— if  the  perversity  of  Fate  interdicts  and 
withholds  this  well-earned  trophy — where  Avill 
hold  the  faith  that  patient  virtue  shall  be  richly 
compensated,  no  matter  howsoever  long  the  boon 
be  deferred  ?    Beyond  any  question,  this  would 


shake  our  abiding  confidence  ir.  the  doctrine  of 
ultimate  remuneration. 

But  we  find,  during  the  latter  days  of  his  bitter 
chastisement,  the  inexorable  hand  of  Destiny 
relenting  and  relaxing  its  unpitying  hold;  and 
once  more  the  goddess  grows  projDitious.  A 
ray  of  hope  breaks  in,  and  reflects  a  gleam 
to  re-illuminate  his  long  despair-benighted  mind. 
From  out  the  deep  gloom  of  utter  hopelessness, 
amid  the  storm-lashed  billows,  on  the  troubled 
sea  of  earthly  perdition,  he  descries  a  glimmer- 
ing hght — a  beacon,  perchance,  on  some  distant 
headland,  some  unknown  promontory.  How 
eagerly  he  gazes  upon  it!  What  strangely  in- 
tense emotion  thrills  his  being,  as  he  watches 
this  unexpected  indication  of  some  haven  on  that 
long-dreamed  shoreless  sea !  What  wild  conflicts 
convulse  his  breast,  as  he  peers  through  the 
spectral  gloom  out  over  the  desolate  waste !  Is 
it  a  land-light,  or  a  transient  meteor?  Is  it  a 
light  to  guide  the  drifting,  hope-bereft  mariner  to 
safety,  or  a  treacherous  delusion,  placed  high  up 
on  inaccessible  crags,  to  warn  the  voyager  of 
dangerous  breakers  on  a  rock-bound  coast  ? 

Poor  Pleasington !  he  had  cause  to  tremble,  to 
hesitate  and  to  doubt.  Once  before  a  seemingly 
friendly,  but  destructively  deceptive  hght,  had 
lured  him  to  swift  disaster,  after  he  had  passed 
safely  the  perils  of  the  Charybdis  despair. 

But  now  it  is  plainer.  The  sharply  defined 
outlines  of  a  practicable  shore  rise  up  against  a 
smiling  horizon.  It  is — it  is  a  light  upon  the  land ! 
How  invitingly  it  beams  at  last!  How  brightly 
it  glows  in  a  peaceful  haven.  Behold  now, 
around  it,  the  friends  of  yore  beckoning  inviting- 
ly and  calling,  "  Come — come !  "  Blessed  friends ! 
What  enchantments  to  lure  our  long  suffering 
voyager  from  the  sea  of  despair !  Friends,  did 
we  say  ?  Yes,  and  truly ;  that  changeless,  con- 
stant friendship  that  remains  unshaken  forever, 
that  no  misfortune,  no  envenomed  breath  of 
slander  can  ever  chill.  Friendship,  Heaven's 
own  attribute! 

Lawrence  Pleasington  was  taken  at  once  into 
the  bosoms  of  the  families  of  his  friends.  CoL 
Worthington,  Orlando  Oglethrop,  Edgar  Harman, 
and  Jesse  Flowers   vied  with    one    another  in 


EIGHTEEN  YEARS  AFTER. 


511 


claiming  him  as  their  permanent  guest  dvu-- 
ing  his  temporary  sojourn  in  New  Yorlc. 
But  at  last  they  compromised,  on  the  basis  that 
his  time  should  be  equally  divided  among  them. 

Carrie  Flowers  and  Rosalia  Harman  were 
equally  as  sympathetic  and  kind  as  were  Cassan- 
dra Worthington  and  Evalina  Oglethrop,  his  long 
ago  intimate  and  admiring  friends.  Of  all  these, 
Carrie  manifested  the  most  attentive  solicitude. 
Often,  when  alone  with  him,  in  the  parlor  of  her 
own  mansion,  she  conversed  with  him  in  a 
tremulous  voice  and  with  moistening  eyes.  Why 
this  was  true,  she,  probably,  might  have  vaguely 
imagined,  but  certainly  she  never  explained,  nor 
did  any  one  question  her  on  the  subject.  Pleas- 
ington  alone  observed  it.  To  all  others,  her  emo- 
tions were  an  unrevealed  mystery,  because  they 
Avere  never  visible  when  a  third  person  was 
present. 

Perhaps  these  symptoms  of  pitying  sympathy 
thrilled  the  being  of  Carrie  Flowers,  because  she 
Avasjibetter  able  to  realize  and  to  appreciate  the 
depth  of  Pleasington's  nameless  woe  than  any 
other  of  his  good  friends.  She  had  beheld  mor- 
tal suffering  that  sickens  the  soul,  and  she  had 
endured  that  silent  sorrow  that  never  reveals  its 
wretchedness  to  the  world.  But  then  she  was 
not  unmindful  of  the  fact  that  he  was  a  secure 
link  that  connected  the  thread  of  romance  which 
bound  her  family  and  the  family  of  ''  the  Angels 
of  the  Mountain  "  into  one,  or  mated  each  one  of 
three  persons  in  the  one  to  each  in  the  other 
family.  Thus  she  had  received  the  only  balm  of 
consolation,  after  her  own  heart  had  bled,  that 
mortal  powers  could  bestow — the  unsullied  jewel 
of  Jesse  Flowers'  spotless  character  and  pure 
devotion. 

It  might  have  been,  too,  that,  as  she  gazed 
upon  the  traces  of  care  so  deeply  imprinted  on 
the  fair  features  and  noble  brow  of  Pleasington, 
Avhile  she  reflected  that  he  was  the  victim  of 
Helen  Mountjoy,  she  recalled  the  scene  in  which 
she  had  mingled  on  that  bitter  winter  day  in 
"The  Mountain  Cabin,"  twenty  years  before, 
when  she  first,  heard  the  plaintive  story  of 
Gertrude  Flowers.  She  recognized  that  the  day 
on  which  the  thread  of  her  own  life  became  in- 
extricably entangled  and  forever  blended  with 


that  of  our  story,  as  the  onci-  brightest  and 
the  saddest  of  its  varying  years. 

Yet,  moreover,  who  can  divine  if  there  was 
not  still  another  association,  almost  inseparably 
entwined  with  the  name  and  life  of  Lawrence 
Pleasington,  and  certainly  so  with  the  relations 
which  these  bear  to  this  story,  to  which  the 
mind  of  Carrie  Flowers  reverted  in  such  sad- 
ness as  to  conjure  up  in  her  heart  the  deepest  senti- 
ments of  pure  Avomanly  compassion?  Innate 
sympathy  for  Pleasington,  and  undying  pity  for 
that  association,  linked,  perhaps,  with  a  lingering 
regret,  were  ample  incentives,  despite  all  dis- 
sembling arts  and  powers  of  self-control,  to  stir 
with  intense  emotion  the  depths  of  her  soul. 

However,  be  all  or  any  of  these  conjectures 
well  founded,  or  without  a  shade  of  claim 
to  validity  the  result  was  nevertheless  important 
to  Lawrence  Pleasington.  In  Carrie  Flowers  he 
found  a  constant  and  devoted  friend,  a  source  of 
comforting  sympathy  which  he  sorely  needed. 
To  him  she  became,  in  all  the  queenly  majesty 
of  the  zealous  and  transcendent  grandeur  of  her 
tender  years,  "The  Angel  of  Consolation." 
With  her  he  dehghted  to  linger.  At  her  home 
he  often  called  on  days  when  his  company  was 
due  to  other  friends.  With  eager  avidity  he 
listened  to  her  cheering  words,  which  pictured 
hope-dawning  happiness  for  the  near  future,  so 
clearly,  that  it  seemed  as  though  he  might  grasp 
the  reality  with  his  outstretched  hand  as  a 
tangible  substance;  yet  he  was  unable  to  realize 
in  it  more  than  the  beguiling  delusion  of  a  pleas- 
ing dream — simply  the  creation  of  imaginary 
fancy,  springing  spontaneously,  as  the  abortive 
result  of  the  overwrought  solicitude  of  a  highly 
romantic  mind. 

At  that  day,  Carrie  Flowers  was  fully  conscious 
that  the  pages  of  this  story  were  slowly  growing. 
Well  did  she  know  to  what  extent  she  had  con- 
tributed to  their  foundation.  Truly  she  was 
advised  of  the  character  and  purport  of  their 
contents,  up  to  the  last  chapter  before  the  present 
one  we  are  now  unfolding.  More  than  ever 
was  she  intensely  anxious  to  be  instrumental  in 
shaping  events  out  of  which  the  suspended  chap- 
ter was  to  form  and  be  unfolded  before  the 
reader's  eyes.    Hence,  partly,  at  least,  her  bound- 


312 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


less  interest  in  Lawrence  Pleasington ;  her  uncon- 
trollable desire  to  bring  his  life  under  the  sway  of 
her  influence.  For  this  she  had  an  all-absorbing 
motive.  But  to  him  this  was  as  incomprehensible 
and  mysterious  as  the  silent  secrets  of  the  grave 
wherein  he  had  buried  his  fondest,  his  last,  his 
only  earthly  hopes — the  cherished  object  of  his 
youtliful  dreams,  the  idolized  adoration  of  his 
laurel- wreathed  manhood,  slumbering  and  moul- 
dering to  dust  for  so  many  mournful  years.  Then, 
he  turned  away  from  the  enchanting  portrait  of 
a  new  hope,  shuddering,  doubting. 

In  sadness  his  mind  wandered  back  into  the 
desolate  shadows  of  the  bitter  past,  to  dwell  with 
fondness  upon  the  treasured  memory  of  one  van- 
ished form ;  to  recall  in  sorrowful  cadence  and 
with  tender  reverence  the  mournful  accents  of 
one  saintly  name.  With  nothing  earthly  was 
Lawrence  Pleasington  able  to  associate  the  idea 
of  the  remote  dream  of  dimly  imagined  Hope, 
save  alone  the  name  and  hfe  of  Effie  Edelstein — 
that  loved  one  for  whom  he  had  suffered  so 
much  unabatable  sorrow,  who  had  suffered  such 
untold  anguish  for  him,  in  the  consecration  of 
her  self-sacrificing  devotion.  Long  years  be- 
fore, the  news  had  reached  him  in  his  gloomy 
seclusion  that  his  lost  Effie  had  been  borne  from 
her  saintly  retirement  to  the  peaceful  repose  of 
the  silent  church-yard.  Hence,  thus  he  mourned 
her. 

To  Carrie  Flowers,  and  Pleasington's  other 
friends,  this  latter  fact  Avas  known ;  but  to  her  at 
least,  this  may  not  have  been  accepted  as  con- 
clusive and  overwhelming  testimony  that  Effle's 
place  might  not  be  re-supplied  in  his  heart.  She 
well  knew,  from  the  most  consummate  experience, 
the  flexible  nature  of  the  human  heart,  and  its 
proneness  to  yield  to  the  healing  antidotes  of 
time  and  the  soothing  lullaby  of  gentle  influence. 

Probably  she  did  not  conceive  that  Pleasington 
might  be  an  excepton  to  the  rule,  nor  believe  that 
his  heart  was  more  abidingly  true  than  her  own 
had  been  devotedly  constant. 

However,  Pleasington  never  mentioned  the 
name  that  still  remained  so  dear  to  him,  nor  did 
his  friends  ever  allude  to  it  iii  his  presence.  Thus 
was  poor,  persecuted,  Effie's  memory  seemingly 
buried  in  the  bosoms  of  her  friends.     It  Avas  en- 


shrined in  the  heart  of  Lawrence  Pleasington  so 
deeply  that  time  could  never  weaken  its  hold, 
could  never  dim  the  brightness  of  its  long  cher- 
ished remembrance. 

Oglethrop,  Harman  &  Co.  had  a  branch  house 
in  a  commercial  centre  of  the  South.  At  the  same 
place  they  had  a  palatial  residence,  where  some 
one  of  them,  with  his  family,  and  usually  the 
families  of  the  other  two,  spent  the  winter. 

Already  had  it  been  previously  arranged  that 
Lawrence  Pleasington  was  to  be  domiciled  at  this 
home  and  instructed  in  the  routine  of  the  busi- 
ness, so  that  he  might  become  qualified  to  assume 
the  management  in  the  interest  of  the  firm  of  his 
confiding  friends. 

After  a  reasonable  sojourn  in  New  York,  he 
gladly  took  his  departure  for  his  new  home,  amid 
other  scenes  more  pleasing,  leaving  behind  him 
associations  from  which  painful  reflections  were 
inseparable.  These  were  the  shades  of  his  blight- 
ed fife,  the  grave  of  his  Hope. 

Once  installed  in  his  new  sphere,  accumulating- 
duties  and  gigantic  responsibilities  devolved  upon 
him  with  such  amazing  rapidity,  that  his  mind 
and  time  became  so  much  absorbed  as  measurably 
to  wean  him  from  the  weary  dream  of  the  past. 
He  was  in  his  legitimate  latitude.  He  recognized 
fully,  and  duly  appreciated,  the  wonderful  oppor- 
tunities for  unlimited  usefulness  thus  placed  at 
his  disposal.  At  once  he  became  intensely  inter- 
ested in  his  labors.  Rapidly  he  mastered  their 
intricacies.  Soon  his  friends  had  unmistakable 
indications  of  his  developing  abihty. 

Early  and  thoroughly  disciplined  training  re- 
ceived at  the  Military  School,  the  stern  and  pre- 
cise duties  of  an  active  commander  in  the  field, 
and  the  long  years  of  practical  experience  as  an 
accountant — as  he  was  employed  during  most  of 
the  darkest  days  of  his  life  of  trial — had  admirably 
qualified  and  fitted  him  for  the  position  to  which 
he  was  assigned  in  his  new  calling.  His  first  care 
and  pride  were  to  meet  the  expectations  of  his 
patrons ;  his  second  to  gain  information  for  him- 
self. In  all  these  directions  he  far  outstripped 
the  most  sanguine  anticipations  of  both  himself 
and  friends;  he  succeeded  rapidly  and  admirably. 

With  his  benefactors  the  terrible  secrets  of 
his  hapless  life  securely  reposed.     No  one  at  his 


EIGHTEEN   YEAES  AFTEE. 


313 


new  borne  knew  aught  concerning  his  history, 
except  his  war  record,  and  that  he  was  a  confi- 
dential friend  of  Oglethrop,  Harman  &  Co.  His 
sorrows  and  his  sufferings  were  yet  unrevealed 
mysteries. 

He  gained  friends,  and  grew  in  business  and 
social  popularity  with  surprising  rapidity.  Carrie 
Flowers  was  an  ornament  and  a  favorite  in  the 
society  of  that  Southern  city  of  Pleasington's 
adoption.  To  her  influence  was  his  special  and 
speedy  advancement  largely  due.  Her  vivid 
portrayal  of  his  many  virtues  and  high  order  of 
talents — the  veritable  nobility  of  character  and 
true  manhood  everywhere  admired — awakened 
extraordinary  interest  in  him. 

Not  many  months  elapsed  before  he  had  un- 
consciously and  unintentionally  made  a  deep  im- 
pression on  the  heart  of  more  than  one  young 
lady.  Quickly  the  wiles  of  Cupid  were  devising 
subtly  constructed  meshes  of  a  cunning  net,  de- 
signed to  entangle  him  in  the  toils  of  love.  No 
unfair  means,  however,  were  employed  to  entrap 
him.  The  ladies  did  not  overstep  the  bounds  of 
strict  propriety.  They  rather  brought  into  requi- 
sition the  attractions  of  their  natal  charms,  the 
spell  of  their  graceful  beauty,  and  the  winning 
enchantment  of  their  modest  virtue.  Many  of 
them  were  the  reigning  belles  of  the  socia'l  king- 
doms in  which  they  held  their  sway.  They  were 
the  admired  of  all  admirers.  At  any  moment 
could  they,  at  will,  have  accepted  a  heart  from 
scores  of  those  of  the  first  young  men  of  the  city, 
figuratively  cast  in  confusing  multiplicity  around 
their  fair  feet,  entreatingly  appealing  to  be 
chosen.  That  Pleasington  would  thus  come  to 
sue  there  could  be  little  doubt.  Thus  reasoned 
the  young  ladies  and  their  intimate  friend,  Carrie 
Flowers. 

As  to  Pleasington  he  met  and  treated  all  with 
that  courteous  consideration  so  natural  to  an  edu- 
cated officer  of  the  United  States  army,  especially 
of  the  old  school,  to  which  he  had  belonged. 
He  was  too  refined  to  manifest  indifference.  In 
fact,  no  man  of.  appreciative  sensibilities  could 
remain  in  such  company  and  not  be  interested,  if 
not  fascinated.  He  esteemed  the  young  ladies, 
not  only  because  they  were  the  friends  of  Carrie 
Flowers,  but  also  because  they  were  worthy  of 


admiration.  But  the  most  perplexing  feature 
was  that  he  appeared  to  have  no  preference — that 
he  seemed  equally  to  admire  and  enjoy  the  so- 
ciety of  them  all. 

Of  all  other  persons,  Carrie  Flowers  watched 
the  progress  of  these  social  conflicts  with  the  most 
intense  interest.  She  belie-vecl  that  Lawrence 
Pleasington  could  be  weaned  from  the  dream  of 
his  hopeless  love,  and  won  by  some  other  fair 
daughter  of  Eve.  She  had  little  faith  in  the 
abiding  constancy  of  the  heart  of  man,  after  he 
has  been  severed  forever  from  the  object  of  his 
transitory  affections.  She  had,  herself,  received 
ample  proof  to  sustain  her  skepticism.  That 
Lawrence  Pleasington  had  proved  true  and  faith- 
ful to  his  first  love  for  so  many  years,  there 
were,  to  her  mind,  abundant  reasons  in  the  insur- 
mountable barrier  of  interposing  circumstances 
over  which  he  exercised  no  power  of  control. 
In  her  opinion  his  constancy  would  not  last  one- 
tenth  the  same  length  of  time  amid  the  surround- 
ings in  which  she  then  beheld  him,  exposed,  as 
he  was,  to  the  captivating  allurement  of  beauty, 
under  the  spell  of  the  most  refined  social  influ- 
ence that  ever  swayed  the  heart  of  man.  Posi- 
tive was  she  that  no  susceptible  heart  could  re- 
sist the  encouraging  temptation  perpetually  offer- 
ing to  that  of  Pleasington  to  be  vitally  impressed. 
Resolved  was  she  to  see  it  put  to  the  utmost  test 
to  which  social  strategy  and  woman's  witching 
graces  could  reduce  the  love  engendering  science. 
Pleasington's  persistent  coyness  as  to  the  love- 
making  feature  of  his  social  relations  with  his 
fair  friends,  was  a  marvel  to  the  fascinating  en- 
chantresses themselves,  and  none  the  less  an  in- 
comprehensible surprise  to  Carrie  Flowers.  Be- 
tween her  and  the  young  ladies  there  existed,  as 
to  this  subject,  the  most  unreserved  confidence. 
Each  fair  strategist  understood  that,  upon  the 
slightest  indication  of  a  preference  on  the  part  of 
Pleasington,  Mrs.  Flowers  would  do  everything 
in  her  power  to  encourage  the  cultivation  of  the 
sentiment;  all  understood  that  her  vitmost  skill 
was  employed  to  induce  him  to  choose  among 
them  some  object  as  a  favorite.  They  could  rely 
implicitly  on  her  discretion  and  prudence  as  to 
what  she  would  disclose  to  him. 

Her  inference  was  that  he  feared  the  fate  which 


Sli 


MYSTIC  EO]\IANCES   OF   THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GKEY. 


lie  was  assured  many  of  the  admirers  of  the  fair 
creatures  were  constantly  receiving — a  cold  and 
unpitying  decision  that  declined  to  accept  and 
reciprocate  their  passionately  proffered  love.  For 
a  long  time  she  could  not,  with  propriety,  attempt 
to  disabuse  his  mind  in  this  direction,  or,  per- 
haps, this  course  might  have  been  adverse  to  her 
well  defined  policy.  She  did  all  in  the  bounds 
of  consistency  by  arranging  to  throw  Pleasington 
constantly  in  the  company  of  some  one  of  the 
young  ladies.  Thus  was  he  placed  constantly 
under  circumstances  the  most  favorable  to  ignite 
a  spark  and  kindle  the  flame  of  love.  His  was 
one  ceaseless  round  of  social  ovations.  If  he  had 
vanity  that  dehghted  in  admiration,  it  certainly 
was  flattered  to  an  extent  sufficient  to  gratify 
the  most  inordinate  desire.  Whatever  may  have 
been  her  wishes  in  the  premises,  Mrs.  Flowers 
manifested  no  disposition  to  disturb  the  natural 
tenor  of  the  course  of  events. 

In  the  height  of  this  season,  she  admitted  to  us 
that  the  goal  of  her  ambition  was  to  force  us  to 
place  Lawrence  Pleasington  where  we  had  as- 
sumed the  audacity,  already,  to  place  herself — in 
the  innumerable  category  of  "  the  hearts  that 
heal."  She  assured  us,  with  complacent  and  con- 
fiding sangfroid,  that  the  siege  was  progressing 
most  successfully;  that  while  ali  approaches,  to 
outward  appearance,  seemed  invulnerable,  there 
were,  unquestionably,  deep  internal  rents  and 
breaches,  steadily  making  inroads  to,  and  under- 
mining, his  stronghold  of  resistance ;  and  that  it 
was  only  a  matter  of  a  little  time  before  he  would 
surrender  at  discretion.  She  claimed  that  he  was 
weaned  from  the  binding  spell  of  his  di-eam  of 
early  love ;  that  his  broken  heart  was  virtually 
healed ;  and  that  the  bitter  memory  of  his  great 
sorrows  and  fearful  suffering  was  rapidly  dissi- 
pating under  the  potent  influence  of  j^leasing  as- 
sociations. Earnestly  did  she  importune  us  to 
await  the  development  of  the  scene  of  romance 
in  which  Lawrence  Pleasington  would  be  one  of 
the  attractive  characters.  That  this  scene  would 
unfold,  on  a  select  social  stage,  within  a  year,  she 
was  absolutely  confident.  She  doubted  not  that 
this  \^^Duld  revolutionize  one  prospective  feature, 
at  least,  of  our  romance,  as  originally  mapped  out, 
in  accordance  with  problematical  anticipations  of 
what  was  likely  to  be  the  inevitable. 


We,  as  a  matter  of  course,  desired  the  final  so- 
cial scene  in  the  role  of  Lawrence  Pleasington. 
His  station  in  the  battle  of  life  Avas  amply 
established  to  meet  the  requirements  of  our  pur- 
pose. He  was  earnestly  engaged  in  many  good 
works.  This  was  in  strict  accord  with  the  natural 
bent  of  his  inclination.  His  intimate  relations 
with  Carrie  Flowers  would  have  thus  enlisted 
him,  no  matter  how  he  was  disposed;  and  these 
stimulated  and  encouraged  his  efforts  very  ma- 
terially. We  could,  therefore,  do  no  better  than 
to  wait.  One  year  would  soon  roll  round  on  the 
wheel  of  tin>e.  And  then,  it  would  be  cruel  to 
deny  the  entreating  appeal  to  "  The  Angel  of 
Consolation,"  to  be  allowed  to  model  this  last 
scene,  since  she  had  modeled  and  wrought  so 
many  of  those  left  in  the  wake  of  the  past. 

As  Lawrence  Pleasington  was  leisurely  walking 
along  the  main  promenade  of  the  city,  one  lonely 
evening,  he  was  suddenly  confronted  and  ad- 
dressed by  an  unique  individual.  The  voice 
seemed  familiar,  but  the  features  were  a  blank  in 
his  memory.  "  It  must  be  some  phantom  of  the 
by-gone  time,"  he  thought,  as  he  gazed  in  won- 
derment upon  the  unearthly-appearing  visage 
standing  before  him.  He  was  puzzled  and 
troubled.     At  last,  he  shook  his  head,  and  said : 

"  You  are  too  hard  for  me,  old  man.  I  am  un- 
able to  place  you." 

With  a  twinkle  in  his  bright  eye — something 
Pleasington  fancied  he  had  seen  many  times  be- 
fore— he  said : 

"  Think  a  bit,  Massa  Pleasington." 

Suddenly  a  flash  of  light  appeared  to  dawn  be- 
fore Pleasington's  mind,  as  he  said  slowly,  and 
with  visible  emotion,  at  the  same  time  extending 
his  hand: 

"  Ghostlj^  shadow  of  Uncle  Jake." 

It  was  a  fact.  There  stood  the  venerable  form 
of  the  old  man  of  another  age — superannuated, 
with  locks  seemingly  more  snowy  and  skin  more 
ebon-hued  than  in  former  days,  when  Pleasing- 
ton knew  him  so  well,  and  met  him  so  often, 
amid  many  varying  and  exciting  scenes. 

Jake  :  "  Yes,  sah ;  Massa  Pleasington,  I  spects 
youze  putty  nigh  right ;  dis  am  berry  close  ter  ole 
Jake's  ghost.  De  ole  man  am  mighty  nigh  ter  de 
land  ob  ghosts.    But  Ize  'ticular  gladt  er  see  you." 


EIGHTEEN   YEARS  AFTER. 


315 


Pleasington  :  "  I  am  delighted  to  see  you, 
Jake ;  but  ashamed  that  I  had  eutirely  forgotten, 
so  tliat  I  should  never  have  recognized  you  on 
the  street." 

Jake  :  "  But  I  hadn't  forgot  you.  Youze 
older  and  stouter;  but  de  ize  and  de  feturs  am  de 
same." 

Pleasington:  "But  how  do  you  happen  to  be 
away  here  ?  " 

Jake:  "Oh,  sah;  dat  am  eazee  'splained. 
Missus  and  Miss  Carnelia,  aze  use  ter  be,  when 
you  uzed  ter  kno'  her,  comze  here  eberry  winter, 
an'  I  comze  wid  dem.  But,  Massa  Pleasington, 
de  ole  manze  not  comin'  manne  timze  mo'." 

Jake's  voice  was  husky  with  emotion,  and  Pleas- 
ington hung  his  head  in  mute  meditation. 

This  circumstance — the  casual  and  unexpected 
meeting  with  Uncle  Jake — afforded  suly'ect  mat- 
ter to  Pleasington  for  reflection.  It  recalled 
some  stirring  reminiscences  of  the  dark  days  of 
the  war,  and  the  young  and  hopeful  summer  of 
his  life. 

Pleasington  :  "I  had  just  left  my  office,  Jake, 
but  come  with  me.  I  will  return.  I  want  to 
talk  with  you." 

The  two  men  walked  slowly  back  to  the  office. 
Pleasington  looked  upon  Jake  with  reverence. 
Jake  gazed  up  at  Pleasington's  face  with  an  air 
of  simple  and  childish  affection. 

The  old  mean's  mind  was  acutely  tenacious. 
He  recalled  with  surprising  accuracy  many  inci- 
dents which  had  long  since  passed  to  oblivion  in 
Pleasington's  mind.  He  detailed,  with  astonish- 
ishing  rapidity,  the  vicissitudes  through  which  he 
had  passed  since  he  left  the  smouldering  ruins 
of  the  old  homestead  mansion  and  his  own 
"  cabin  in  the  lane."  When  referring  to  this  cir- 
cumstance, Jake  wept  like  a  broken-hearted  child. 
Poor  old  man  !  Nature's  child  he  was ;  he  is  a 
child  again  by  reason  of  his  dotage. 

Pleasington  was  missing  that  evening  from  his 
accustomed  place  in  the  gay  and  festive  social 
circle,  so  uniformly  graced  by  his  presence ;  he 
was  with  Leonoria,  Corneha  and  Jake.  The  old 
man  brought  forth  the  traditional  banjo,  and 
thrilled  his  friends  with  the  memory  of  days  that  I 
were  dead,  and  the  dear  "  voices  that  were  for 
ever  still." 


"When  the  shadows  of  the  next  evening  spread 
their  balmy  wings  over  the  beautiful  city,  Carrie 
Flowers  had  met  Pleasington's  fair  friends  of  the 
"  out-post  days,"  and  the  renowned  Jake,  whose 
romantic  and  pathetic  story  she  had  heard  so  many 
times — whose  thrilling  experiences  in  their  active 
and  exciting  lives  she  had  oftener  envied  and 
sighed  in  vain  to  emulate. 

Among  other  incidents  related  to  Pleasington 
by  Jake,  at  various  times,  the  former  was  much 
interested  in  some  features  of  the  reminiscences 

of  Gen.  E ,  with  which  the  old  man  seemed 

to  be  singularly  familiar.  He  pictured  most  viv- 
idly the  G-eneral's  flight,  disguise,  escape  from 
the  country  at  the  close  of  the  war,  and  long  re- 
sidence, with  its  innumerable  hardships  and  pri- 
vations, in  a  foreign  land.  Some  of  these  features 
Pleasington  often  recounts  with  unfeigned  gusto. 

To  some  of  his  friends  he  said : 

"It  seems  that  there  was  a  famous  doctor  in 
the  Valley  of  Virginia,  wealthy,  and  the  owner 
of  numerous  slaves  before  the  war.  This  doctor 
was  a  member  of  the  Virginia  Convention,  and 
denounced  E with  all  the  opprobrious  epi- 
thets in  the  language,  owing  to  his  masterful  op- 
position to  secession.  The  doctor's  favorite  hobby 
was  his  rights  in  the  Territories.  "With  this  doc- 
trine he  assailed  E continually,  Avhenever  he 

had  the  floor.  The  latter  retorted  with  his  usual 
unanswerable  philippics — the  ghastly  portrait  of 
a  civil  war  and  ruin  of  the  South.  Time  rolled 
on  apace.     Sheridan  was  devastating  the  Valley 

of  Virginia ;  Gen.  E advancing  to  meet  him. 

The  latter  was  well  up  to  the  front,  reconnoiter- 
ing.  Citizens  were  flying  pell-mell  before  the 
Federal  advance,  leaving  their  burning  homesteads 
behind  them.  One  wagon,  driven  by  an  over- 
excited white  man,  containing  a  woman,  two 
children,  and  some  odd  household  effects,  speci- 
ally attracted  the  attention  of  the  General.  He 
recognized  the  doctor  in  the  driver.  This  was 
the  nearest  the  doctor  had  ever  been  to  the  war. 
The  General  had  waited  long  and  patiently.  He 
saw  at  last  his  supreme  opportunity.  Memories 
of  the  hot  debates  in  the  Convention  rushed  up 
before  his  mind.  For  the  moment  he  forgot  the 
advancing  enemy  and  the  flying  missiles  of  death. 
Standing  straight  in  his  stirrups  he  shouted : 


316 


MYSTIC  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


"'Hallo!  Hold  on  there,  Doctor.  Where  are 
you  going,  Doctor  ? ' 

"  Doctor  :  '  I  don't  know,  General.  My  house 
is  in  flames.  I  am  ruined.  Everything  I  have  left 
is  in  the  wagon.  I  don't  know  what  to  do,  nor 
where  I  am  going.' 

"Gen.  E — :  'I  know  where  j'ou  are  going, 
doctor ! ' 

"  Doctor  :  '  Where  am  I  going.  General  ?  ' 
"Gen.  E — :   'To  hunt  for  your  rights  in  the 
Territories,  sir.' 

"The  old  General  had  his  revenge,  and  rode  on 
apparently  gratified. 

"During  his  wanderings,  while  an  exile,  a  Ma- 
jor-General of  the  United  States  Army — a  native 
of  the  Old  Dominion — recognized  the  General's 
name  on  the  register  of  a  hotel.  Now  if  there 
was  any  one  thing  which  the  old  General  hated 
more  cordially  than  everything  else,  that  object 
was  a  native  and  resident  Virginian  who  had 
served  against  her  during  the  war.  The  United 
States  officer  had  never  met  Gen.  E person- 
ally, and  hence  was  unable  to  recognize  him 
among  the  guests  of  the  hotel.  He,  therefore, 
applied  to  the  landlord  for  an  introduction.  The 
latter,  by  this  time,  knew  the  uncouth  old  Gen- 
eral pretty  well.  He  very  politely  declined  to 
make  the  introduction  desired ;  and,  at  the  same 
tir.ie,  informed  the  applicant  that  his  rank  justi- 
fied liii!!  to  introduce  himself  to  a  fellow-country- 
man in  a  strange  land.  He  pointed  out  the  old 
Confederate  commander.  The  latter,  with  his 
broad-brimmed  slouch  hat  well  down  over  his 
eyes,  and  his  hands  behind  his  back,  was  leisure- 
ly promenading  back  and  forth  along  the  grand 
piazza  of  the  hotel.    Approaching  him,  the  United 

States  officer,  Gen.  H ,  said  courteously : 

"  'Gen.  E ,  I  presume.     I  am  Gen.  H , 

of  the  United  States  Army.     We  met  rather  un- 
pleasantly  in  the  Valley  of  Virginia  and  else- 
wliLne ;  but  I  hope  we  may  be  friends  now,   I  am  . 
glad  to  meet  you.' 

"Pausing  abruptly  and  eyeing  the  elegantly 
dressed  soldier  carefully,  he  said  slowly  and  with 
sententious  sarcasm : 

"  '  Yes,  it  used  to  be  Gen.  E ,  and  I  was 

there,  sir.' 

"After   an    embarrassing   pause.  Gen.   H 


expatiated  on  the  vicissitudes  of  the  war,  and 
ultimately  wound  up  by  displaying  a  beautiful 
gold  medal,  which  he  explained  had  been  pre- 
sented to  him  by  the  officers  of  his  division  for 
gallant  and  meritorious  service  on  the  battlefield. 
The  old  general  remained  silent  for  some  mo- 
ments, and  then  said : 

"  'Yes,  I  see  it' 

"  Then,  brooding  reflectively  for  some  time, 
as  he  slowly  paced  the  floor,  he  again  paused  and 
said: 

"  '  Times  have  greatly  changed.' 

"Gen.  H grasped  the  situation,  and  doubt- 
less imagining  that  the  rancorous  old  rebel  was 
warming  up,  to  some  extent,  at  least,  in  the 
direction  of  appreciation,  he  boldly  launched  out 
in  a  beautiful  little  speech,  most  appropriately 
worded,  to  pave  the  Avay  for  a  lavish  compliment 
from  his  late  antagonist.  The  latter  paused  and 
faced  the  speaker,  when  the  climax  of  the  per- 
roration  was  reached,  and  the  harmonious  qa- 
dences  of  that  musical  voice  had  died  awaj^  Thus 
standing,  he  made  one  herculean  effort  to  raise 
his  stooping,  decrepit  form  to  the  towering 
dignity  of  his  vanished  grandeur,  and  said  in  tones 
of  inimitable  sarcasm : 

"  '  Yes,  in  the  good  old  days  of  Christ,  they 
used  to  hang  thieves  on  crosses,  but  now  they 
hang  ah  the  crosses  on  thieves.' 

"  The  old  man  had  wreaked  his  revenge,  and 
he  then  resumed  his  walk  with  composed  in- 
difference." 

We  might  fill  a  chapter  with  the  quaint 
speeches  of  this  eccentric  and  unreconstructed 
old  man,  whose  prejudices  and  hatreds  neither 
time  nor  circumstance  has  tended  to  abate ;  who 
never  forsakes  a  friend,  and  never  forgives 
an  enemy  in  his  native  State.  For  the  people 
of  the  Northern  States,  who  proved  their  pro- 
fessions, by  facing  the  battle-storm,  he  cherishes 
no  animosity.  These  he  esteems.  But  the  pub- 
lic distractors  he  detests.  He  is  a  marvel  of  sin- 
cerity— never  dissembling — and  the  unbending 
soul  of  honor.  A  man  of  unflinching  courage, 
a  mind  replete  with  inexhaustible  stores  of  wit, 
and  immeasurable  acumen  of  cool  and  tenacious 
judgment,  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  his  all  but 
matchless  talents    and  overpowering    eloquence 


EIGHTEEN  YEARS  AFTER. 


31^ 


vrci'e  not  early  employed  in  the  cause  of  recon- 
ciliation and  in  restoring  the  ruined  fortunes  of 
the  South.  But  the  contumely  cast  upon  his 
name  by  his  own  people,  because  of  his  desper- 
ate zeal  and  determinate  efforts  in  the  tireless 
struggles  to  avert  the  inevitable  disasters  vvrhich 
he  so  clearly  foresaw  and  so  truly  predicted  for 
his  iTot-headed  countrymen,  and  the  cause  that 
banished  him  so  long  from  his  native  land,  after 
the  end  came,  doubtless  soured  his  disposition 
and  embittered  his  life,  to  an  extent  estranging 
his  affections  from  what  might  have  jjroved 
otherwise  a  pleasing  enterprise. 

With  lingering  reluctance  we  leave  this  inter- 
esting character,  who  has  moved  for  more  than 
eighty  winters  in  the  dreamy  shades  of  fairy- 
tale realities.  His  whole  life  has  been  almost  one 
unbroken  chain  of  thrilling  vicissitudes,  many 
of  which  the  creators  of  fiction  might  strive  in 
vain  to  rival  in  imagery.  We  have,  all  along, 
regretted  that  so  little  of  his  war  role  would 
blend  with  the  thread  of  our  story — that  our 
characters  were  not  more  intimately  associated 
with  him.  In  the  camp,  on  the  parade-ground, 
on  the  march,  and  on  the  battlefield,  he  trans- 
formed the  sober  duties  of  the  commander  to  a 
pleasing  vein  of  witty  or  sarcastic  romance. 

Was  it  possible  to  disguise  his  identity  beyond 
the  peradventure  of  recognition,  his  life  and  its 
varied  relations  would  make  a  j'omance  of  deeply 
thrilling  interest. 

Here,  too,  are  we  constrained  to  part  with 
Uncle  Jake — nature's  romantic  child.  Largely 
would  the  latter  journey  of  his  life  blend  with 
that  of  the  old  general  in  a  new  story,  with  these 
pecuhar  men  as  prominent  characters.  Jake 
admired  the  old  general;  the  latter  esteemed  and 
appreciated  Jake  for  his  intrinsic  merit,  sincerity, 
and,  above  all,  his  natal  honesty. 

In  conclusion,  it  must  suffice  to  say,  as  an 
explanation  of  these  relations,  that  Leonoria  Fair- 
child  was  a  near  relative  of  Gen.  E . 

Leonoria  and  Cornelia  must  also  disappear. 
Their  roles,  as  direct  participants  in  our  scenes, 
terminated  away  back  in  the  early  months  of 
the  Avar.  They  have  since  passed  through  many 
varied  experiences,  but  these  would  not  harmon- 
ize  with   our    story.      Only   twice    have    they 


casually  and  but  slightly  re-entered  in  the  long 
and  tortuous  course  of  its  unfolding.  Now  they 
must  leave  it — and  forever. 

The  gay  season  amid  the  sylvan  bowers  of  the 
Southern  Eden,  in  which  Lawrence  Pleasington 
met  such  varying  experiences,  drew  towards  its 
close.  The  day  was  fixed  on  which  his  good 
angel,  Carrie  Flowers,  would  leave  him  and  re- 
tire to  her  Northern  home.  The  time  was  near 
when  his  fair  friends,  the  witching  daughters  of 
Dixie,  would  take  their  departure  for  the  festive 
conquests  of  summer  watering  resorts.  Soon 
Lawrence  would  be  left  a  prey  to  the  monotony 
of  the  dull  business  season  of  a  Southern  city, 
and  the  lonely  occupant  of  the  charming  mansion 
of  his  friends. 

To  him  these  were  not,  probably,  altogether 
pleasing  reflections,  yet  they  were  the  inevitable. 
He  had  n.o  inclination  to  visit  the  land  of  his 
nativity  and  of  his  sorrows.  To  his  Southern  trust 
he  Avas  enslaved,  but  it  was  a  pleasing  bondage 
to  him. 

Here  he  had  an  opportunity  to  do  good.  At 
his  disposal  a  special  fund  was  placed  by  Carrie 
Flowers,  to  be  employed  in  such  charities  as  he 
might  deem  best.  Many  were  the  sad  and  de- 
spairing hearts  by  him  gladdened  and  cheered. 

The  scenes  through  which  he  had  passed  dur- 
ing the  winter  were  wonderful.  The  transfor- 
mations wrought  by  one  short  season,  which  was 
far  spent  before  he  was  known  in  the  brilliant 
circles  in  which  he  moved  and  where  he  had  met 
such  appreciative  favor,  were  astonishing.  He 
could  hardly  realize  that  he  was  not  in  the  be- 
guiling delusion  of  a  fairy  dreamland — in  the 
hallucination  of  a  deceptive  delusion,  as  he  had 
been  so  many  times  in  the  saJ,  sad  visions  of  the 
past. 

Might  it  be  at  all  strange  if  he  wondered  what 
another  season  would  develop  among  scenes  so 
charming  and  under  influences  so  captivating? 
Certainly  there  was  no  telling;  this  was  far 
beyond  the  latitude  of  conjecture.  There  were 
many  chances  in  favor  of  the  doctrine  of  Carrie 
Flowers,  that  the  seemingly  extinct  embers  would 
agcin  be  ignited,  and  from  their  smouldering  ashes 
rise  again^  phoenix-like,  the  glorious  blessing  of  a 
happier  love.     There  could  be  no  question  but 


318 


^lYSTIC  KOMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GEEY. 


that  the  shadows  of  gloom  were  vanishing,  and 
lefulgent  rays  of  brightness  were  dawning  in 
their  stead.  Nature  was  asserting  her  sway; 
Time  was  administering  her  antidotes ;  the  malady 
of  a  settled  melancholy,  with  its  "  serpent's 
tooth "  of  hopeless  despair,  was  steadily  and 
surely  yielding  to  the  soothing  influences  of  these 
potent  remedies.  Lawrence  Pleasington  was 
becoming  the  new  creature  of  a  metamorphosed 
life.  He  himself  doubted  whither  these  influ- 
ences were  leading  or  driving  him. 

Pleasington's  good  friend,  Carrie  Flowers,  had 
been  extremely  indulgent.  She  never  alluded  to 
any  serious  sentiments,  on  his  part,  in  relation 
to  his  social  complications.  Never  did  she  in- 
timate to  him  that  she  imagined  it  possible 
for  him  to  become  entangled  in  the  meshes 
of  Cupid's  ensnaring  net.  She  rather  tended 
her  efforts  in  the  direction  of  impressing  his 
mind  with  the  idea  that  the  solicitous  esteem 
manifested  for  himself  by  the  blushing  Eoses  of 
the  South,  was  but  the  natural  spontaneity  of 
the  boundless  sociability  and  exuberant  friend- 
ship inherent  with  the  genial  people  of  their 
sunny  land.  Earnestly  she  desired  Destiny  to 
take  its  course  undisturbed.  Eagerly  she  watched 
its  Avavering  progress. 

But  as  the  day  drew  near  for  her  departure, 
she  decided  to  speak  to  him.  Perhaps  she  was 
thus  impelled  by  the  promptings  of  her  woman's 
irrepressible  curiosity,  or  may  be  she  had  another 
and  a  subtler  motive.  At  all  events,  she  desired 
to  bear  off  with  her  an  intimation  of  his  senti- 
ments.   And  she  said  to  him : 

"  Now,  Lawrence,  my  good  friend,  I  have  a 
favor  to  ask  of  you.  Will  you  grant  it?  It  shall 
be  a  matter  of  sacred  confidence,  if  you  prefer." 

Pleasington  :  "  Certainly,  I  will  grant  any  favor 
you  can  ask,  to  my  life  itself.  Such  is  my  gratitude." 

Carrie  :  "  Don't  talk  to  me  about  gratitude.  I 
have  simply  discharged  a  debt  to  humanity,  in 
my  solicitude  for  your  welfare,  comfort  and  hap- 
piness. I  have  merely  sought  to  win  you  back 
to  the  brightness  of  life  again.  I  earnestly  hope 
I  am  succeeding." 

Pleasington  :  "  You  are  succeeding  far  beyond 
the  bounds  of  reasonable  possibility,  or  what  I 
dreamed  might  ever  prove  a  reality." 


Carrie:  "T  Avant  to  know  with  whom  of 
your  fair  friends  you  are  now  most  favorably 
impressed?" 

Pleasington  :  "  I  esteem  and  appreciate  them 
all  very  much.  I  think  I  have  not  the  slightest 
preference.  Reallj',  I  have  never  given  the  sub- 
ject a  thought.  I  could  like  any  one  of  them  as 
a  sister.  Beyond  this,  my  inclination  is  not 
prone  to  venture." 

Carrie  :  "  I  am  really  disappointed,  I  felt 
sure  that  ere  now  you  would  have  selected  a 
favorite  flower  from  the  pretty  group." 

Pleasington:  "  I  have  never  for  one  moment 
indulged  a  dream — not  even  as  the  remotest  possi- 
bility. The  young  ladies  are  the  admired  of  many 
admirers.  Many  sore  hearts  are  exiled  suppli- 
cants from  their  disappointing  shrines.  Had  I 
an  emotional  fount  capable  of  being  thus  victim- 
ized, I  know  too  truly  and  remember  too  well 
the  pangs  of  social  discomfiture  to  jeopardize  it 
where  I  clearly  perceive  the  baffled  expectations 
of  others  stranded  as  helpless  wrecks." 

Carrie:  "  But  I  can  assure  you,  from  my  con- 
summate knowledge  of  human  nature,  that  you 
would  meet  no  such  experience.  I  am  positive, 
without,  however,  having  the  slightest  expressed 
intimation  on  the  subject,  that  any  of  them  would 
be  pleased  to  meet  a  serious  proposition  from  you 
half  way.  Rarely  have  I  observed  a  gentleman 
so  encouragingly  received  m  society." 

Pleasington  :  "  I  prize  the  fact  more  than  I  am 
able  to  express  to  you.  But,  frankly,  my  good 
friend,  Avere  there  no  questions  about  the  results, 
I  could  not  entertain  the  idea,  Avithout  a  heart  in 
the  enterprise ;  and  this  I  cannot  have — it  Avould 
be  impossible." 

Carrie  :  "  But,  my  friend,  you  must  educate 
yourself  for  this  responsibility.  It  is  your  duty. 
You  owe  it  to  society,  to  humanity,  to  your  race 
and  line.  'Life  is  short  and  time  is  fleeing.'  You 
have  been  robbed  of  much  of  these  heritages. 
NoAV  you  are  in  the  prime  of  manhood.  You 
cannot  afford  to  incur  the  risk  of  a  penalty  for 
shirking  the  palpable  demands  of  divine  and  moral 
law.  There  is  too  much  nobihty  of  natural  char- 
acter in  you  to  be  sacrificed  on  the  dreary  altar 
of  Disconsolation.  Once  I  felt  as  you  noAv  feel. 
But  the  dark  phantom  of  stern  duty  rose  up  be- 


EIGHTEEN  YEAES  AETEK. 


319 


fore  and  haunted  me  perpetually.  Its  voice  was 
too  imperative  to  be  disregarded.  }ily  melan- 
choly compunctions  yielded  to  its  urgent  com- 
mands. And  thus,  my  friend,  I  desire  to  persuade 
you,  is  your  remedy  to  be  secured." 

Pleasington:  "  Probably  you  are  right.  Your 
arguments  appear  to  be  unanswerable.  But  it 
will  require  time  for  me  to  reconcile  myself  to 
their  application,  I  shall  reiJect  upon  the  subject, 
because  you  urge  me  to  adopt  its  practical  prin- 
ciples. Still,  however,  otherwise  I  feel  not  the 
sUghtest  interest  in  the  probable  or,  perhaps,  more 
properly  speaking,  the  problematical  issue  of  its 
consideration." 

Carrie  :  "  Well,  I  shall  not  further  press  the 
question.  Beauty,  wealth,  and  the  highest  excel- 
lence of  womanly  virtue,  are,  figuratively  speak- 
ing, kneeling  at  your  feet.  I  can  depend  on  your 
good  judgment  to  bid  them  rise  in  their  subhme 
majesty  and  receive  your  blessing.  I  know  that, 
ultimately,  you  will  accept  them  considerately 
and  graciously — nay,  earnestly  sue  for  their  smiling 
bestowal." 

Pleasington:  "I  recognize  the  burden  of  duty 
wliich  devolves  upon  me.  Whenever  I  can  ex- 
perience a  harmonizing  emotit)n  of  inclination,  I 
shall  apprize  you  that  I  am  vanquished.  This  may 
be  next  winter ;  it  might  be — never.  Matrimony 
is  a  question  too  serious  to  be  lightly  esteemed." 

To  Pleasington  the  summer  and  faU  were  long 
and  monotonous  seasons.  Business  activity  did 
not  appear  until  late  in  November.  Prom  his 
friends  in  New  York  he  learned  that  none  of 
them  would  join  him  until  Christmas-eve.  Dur- 
ing these  long  and  lonesome  months  he  had  con- 
sidered seriously  the  important  subject  discussed 
with  Carrie  Flowers. 

Early  in  the  fall  his  fair  friends  of  the  past 
winter,  returned  to  the  sunny  land  of  their  birth, 
to  gladden  it  with  their  smiles,  and  fill  its  fragrant 
zephyrs  with  the  melody  of  their  voices.  But 
they  saw  much  less  of  Lawrence  Pleasington 
than  they  had  formerly  seen  when  Carrie  Flow- 
ers was  present  to  display  her  deUcate  feats  of 
social  strategy.  Why  it  was,  he  could  not  ex- 
plain nor  understand,  but  instinctively  he  shrunk 
from  the  responsibility  of  acting  on  her  advice. 
December  found  him  with  his  relations  no  more 


intimate  with  any  lady  than  they  were  when  the 
gay  season  closed — rather  tended  his  proneness 
in  the  direction  of  retrogression  than  that  of  ad- 
vancement. Thus  he  unbosomed  himself  to  his 
absent  friend : 

"  December  2,  1882. 

"  Mrs.  Carrie  V.  Flowers,  New  York  : 

"Ji//  much  appreciated  frieiid : 

"  It  is  my  duty  to  acknowledge  and  answer  your 
esteemed  letter  of  the  28th  ult.,  which  reached 
me  this  evening.  How  sad  to  reflect  that  twenty- 
two  more  long  days  and  nights  must  dawn  and 
wane  ere  I  am  to  be  blessed  with  your  genial 
greeting.  I  am  very  lonesome,  and  miss  you 
beyond  expression.  No  other  can  supply  your 
absent  company. 

"  But,  since  I  want  to  see  you  so  much,  I  must 
still  frankly  admit,  that  I  dread  to  meet  you.  Un- 
dutifully  have  I  disregarded  your  injunction.  My 
social  status  and  inclination  remain  unchanged, 
except,  perhaps,  I  view  the  subject  with  more 
disfavor  than  I  viewed  it  when  we  parted.  I  re- 
gret to  tell  you  this.  I  am  pained  to  disappoint 
you.  Gladly  would  I  make  great  sacrifices  to 
meet  your  wishes,  in  any  other  direction.  But 
in  this  they  are  too  serious.  I  cannot  make  them. 
They  involve  questions  of  too  much  import. 

''  A  lady  expects,  with  an  offer  of  marriage,  a 
profession  of  love.  This  is  her  right.  Without 
it,  made  in  manifest  sincerity,  I  could  not  respect 
the  lady  who  would  accept  such  a  suitor.  Tins 
Avould  be  my  predicament :  I  should  be  that 
uninviting  wooer.  How  could  I  ask  one  of  your 
friends,  whose  fair  and  impulsive  nature  is  pas- 
sionate, exacting  devotion  personified,  to  be  my 
bride  ?  With  what  could  I  reward  her  affection, 
if  bestowed  ?  With  nothing  but  the  hollow 
mockery  of  dissimulation  forced  from  the  sterile 
cavities  of  my  desolate  heart.  I  cannot,  I  will 
not,  attempt  such  base  deception.  My  chivalrous 
instincts  of  soldierly  gallantry,  and.the  promptings 
of  true  manhood,  revolt  at  the  bare  contemplation. 
Your  friends  are  adorable.  Had  I  the  inestim- 
able treasures  of  love  to  bestow  I  should  at  once 
lay  them  entreatingly  at  the  feet  of  some  one  of 
these  sweet  daughters  of  the  South.  I  once  have 
loved,  but,  with  me,  love  is  at  an  end.     I  cannot 


320 


MYSTIC    EOMANCES   OF  THE  BLUE  A^'D  THE  GEET. 


pretend  that  I  feel  an  emotion  to  which  I  am  an 
utter  stranger. 

"  With  great  and  patient  effort  have  I  tried  to 
reconcile  my  conscience  to  a  course  that  might 
ultimately  lead  to  your  expectation. 

"In  your  grand  old  parlor  have  I  brooded  over 
this  question,  amid  the  purple  gloom  and  haunted 
loneliness  of  many  a  midnight:  yes,  haunted 
by  a  spirit  that  forsakes  me  not.  There,  before 
me,  stood  the  ideal  image  of  that  fair  young  life, 
whose  broken  heart  once  beat  for  me  alone — a 
devotion  unsurpassed  in  this  world.  Think  of 
the  bitter  abnegation  of  its  sacrifice,  voluntarily 
rendered.  A  blighting  curse  on  my  very  thought 
of  inconstancy!  Well  might  the  phantom  spectre 
rebuke  my  musings.  It  should  have  paralyzed 
my  reflective  faculties.  Your  own  case,  my  gra- 
cious friend,  offers  no  parallel  to  mine.  You 
Avere  forsaken — no  matter  if  you  had  been  la- 
boring under  no  delusion  as  to  the  fate  of  the 
object  of  your  adoration.  This  abundantly  justi- 
fies your  doctrine  as  to  your  course.  But  I  should 
have  nothing  to  console  me,  as  an  extenuating 
excuse.  It  would  be  monstrous  ingratitude  to  a 
sacred  memory. 

"I  have  refrained  from  intimating  this  mourn- 
ful subject  to  you.  I  have  been  thankful  that 
your  charitable  consideration  restrained  you  from 
alluding  to  this  sad  theme.  I  should  not  recall  it 
now — nor  never — was  I  not  driven  to  this  des- 
perate extremity,  in  self-defence,  of  apparent  in- 
gratitude to  you.  A  proper  reverence  strictly 
enjoins  silence.  No  other  expression  could  be  so 
eloquently  appropriate.  I  trust  there  may  be 
no  occasion  again  to  disturb  the  quietude  of  its 
repose — that  should  be  eternal. 

"  Pray  abandon  your  social  projects  for  me.  I 
appreciate  your  solicitude,  but  no  pleasing  in- 
fluence, nor  associations,  in  this  world,  could  ever 
compensate  for  the  pain  the  continued  endeavor 
to  consummate  your  plans  would  inflict. 

"  I  trust  you  may  be  able  to  appreciate  my 
position.  I  hope  you  will  pardon  my  seeming 
ingratitude,  and  that  this  may  be  the  last  ex- 
pression you  will  ever  exact  of  me  on  this  subject. 

"  I  am,  gratefully,  your  friend, 

"  Lawrenck  Pleasington." 


In  due  course  of  time  he  received  the  following 
reply : 

" Place,  New  York,  Dec.  10,  1882. 

"  Major  Lawrence  Pleasington  ! 

"  My  Esteemed  Friend : 

"  Your  late  letter  has  been  read  with  interested 
surprise.  It  amazes  me.  Admiration  is  no  ade- 
quate term  to  express  my  emotion.  I  am  con- 
strained to  confess  that  I  am  vanquished,  and 
must  exclaim  '  Evireka ! '  Yes,  I  have  found 
what  I  verily  believed  did  not  exist — a  man  of  con- 
stant devotion,  whom  time,  circumstance,  nor 
temptation  could  never  change.  The  romancer's 
ideal  dream,  at  last !  WeU  have  you  acted  your 
part!  How  subtly  have  you  played  to  his  fancy ! 
Is  it  conspiracy  to  refute  and  overwhelm  my 
cherished  doctrines  ?     For  this  once,*I  am  baffled. 

"  I  shall  not,  however,  abandon  my  purpose.  I 
shaU  sj^eak  of  it  with  deeper  meaning  than  ever, 
and  teach  you  speedily  to  dwell  on  it  with  de- 
light. Before  the  season  closes,  I  shall  witness 
you  in  love,  bowing  meekly  at  Cupid's  shrine, 
and  standing  blushingly  at  the  altar  of  matri- 
mony, seahng  your  plighted  vows  with  one  of 
Eve's  fairest  daughters.  Then  your  long  mourned 
Effie  will  be  no  mf)re  regretted. 

"  Your  constant  friend, 

"  Carrie  V.  Flowers.' 


The  twenty-fourth  of  December  came,  and  with 
it,  Pleasington'^  friends,  Harman,  Oglethrop,  and 
Flowers,  with  their  families. 

The  grand  double  parlors  were  aglow  with  the 
meUow  brightness  of  the  chandeliers.  All  within 
was  perfumed  by  Southern  flowers,  and  beauti- 
ful in  artful  appointments  and  the  assembled 
company. 

But  stifled  anticipation  seemed  to  pervade  the 
apartments,  except  as  to  Pleasington,  who  alone 
Avas  tranquil,  and  unable  to  divine  the  cause  of 
the  perceptible  flutter  of  restless  expectation 
among  his  friends.  A  few  moments  sufficed  to 
reveal  the  mystery. 

Robed  in  bridal  splendor,  appeared  and  stood 
before  him,  in  queenly  majesty,  witching  mod- 
esty, and  blooming  loveliness,  the  graceful  form 
of  Effie  Edelstein — his  long  lost  love,  his  resur- 
rected bride  ! 


EIGHTEEN   YEARS  AFTER. 


321 


Lawrence  Pleasington  turned  deathly  pale  and 
trembled  violently.  For  the  moment  the  shrouded 
ghost  of  so  many  nights  became,  to  his  mind,  a 
tangible  reality.  But  there  were  the  heaving 
bosom,  the  love-lit  eye  of  the  dreamy  past. 
Was  it  a  resemblance  so  striking  that  he  could 
not  perceive  the  deception,  designed  to  delude 
him,  or  was  it  a  spirit  ?  Equally  discomposed 
was  the  faithful  woman  of  so  many  sorrowful 
years.  She  stood  convulsed  with  emotion  too 
deep  for  utterance,  too  sacred  for  mortal  appre- 
riation.     Adorable  heroine ! 

She  was  the  fir^t  to  speak. 

Effie:  "Lawrence,  don't  you  know  me?" 

Her  voice  sent  a  current  of  electric  magnetism 
through  his  being.  The  red  glow  of  long-for- 
gotten joy  remounted  to  his  cheek.  With  one 
impulsive  bound  he  clasped  her  to  his  bosom  ; 
pressed  eagerly  "the  touch  of  a  vanished  hand." 

Lawrence  :  "  Effie,  my  long  mourned  love ! 
Tliis  is  more  than  a  fleeting  dream  I  " 

Effie  :  "  Yes,  LaAvrence,  there  are  no  shadowy 
delusions  here.  The  ecstacies  of  this  blessed  mo- 
ment compensate  for  all  I  have  suffered!  " 

Carrie:  "My  prophesy  is  fulfilled.  Your 
mourned  Effie  is  no  longer  regretted.  Here 
is  a  queenly  reward  for  constant  devotion.  I 
proved  you.  I  weighed  you  in  love's  sensitive 
scales,  and  found  you  not  wanting  in  its  sublime 
attributes.  I  rejoice  with  you.  I  shall  have  the 
unutterable  pleasure  of  witnessing,  in  this  sunny 
land  of  love,  the  happy  consummation  of  the 
blissful  dream  of  your  manhood's  years." 

EvALiA  :    "  Effie  and   Lawrence,  my  re-united 

friends!     Words  cannot  express  the  joy  I  feel." 

Rosalia:  "God  bless  you,  my  friends!  I  am 

happy.     At  last  your  broken  hearts  have  found 

their  healing  balm." 

Oglethrop:  "Lawrence,  behold  thy  admirable 
marvel  of  devotion!  Effie,  I  often  told  him  all 
the  world  could  never  estrange  you  from  him. 
This  is  pleasure  to  me  beyond  fiction's  image." 

Flowers:  "I  thank  G-od  that  I  have  hved  to 
see  the  light  of  this  day,  which  dawned  to  illum- 
inate the  way  to  so  much  mortal  happiness, 
and  that  I  am  here  as  a  participating  witness." 

Harman  :  "  My  thrice  fortunate  friends !  I  am 
thrilled  with  your  boundless  delights.    May  your 


future  paths  be  strewn  with  flowei-s,  and  may 
you  never  know  a  sorrow." 

Carrie:  "This  occasion  is  too  sacred  for  eyes 
and  ears  of  flesh  and  blood.  Let  us  retire. 
When  the  Christmas  bells  chime  midnight,  we 
will  return  with  the  holy  man." 

Left  alone  to  the  rapture  of  their  own  society, 
Lawrence  and  Effie,  the  faithful,  the  devoted,  the 
true,  found  themselves  genuine  children  of  love, 
reborn  to  a  reahzation  of  its  fascinations.  He 
was  the  first  to  speak. 

Lawrence:  "Tell  me,  darling,  how  this  all 
came  to  be?  Many  years  I  have  mourned  you 
dead.     Why  has  no  one  sooner  undeceived  me?" 

Effie:  "The  story  is  long  and  complicated. 
The  pleasure  of  this  hour  should  scarcely  be 
shadowed  by  its  gloomy  recital,  but  since  this 
propitious  Christmas-eve  meeting  is  the  result, 
we  may  be  yet  thankful  for  and  bless  the  other- 
wise uninviting  theme.  We  will,  therefore,  pass 
that  feature  now,  and  leave  it  in  the  desolate 
grave  of  our  resurrected  hopes. 

"  You  remember  that  sad,  sad  Christmas  of 
1865 — a  day  on  which  the  doleful  notes  of  woe, 
borne  in  those  melancholy  words,  '  It  might  have 
been ! '  brought  so  much  of  mournful  distress  to 
our  despairing  liearts.  This,  which  you  now  be- 
hold, was  the  bridal  robe  I  should  have  worn  on 
that  glad  day.  I  prepared  it  in  the  joyous  month 
of  May,  when  we  were  so  happy  together  over 
our  re-union,  that  of  our  long  distracted  country, 
and  your  safe  delivery  from  the  dark  valleys  of 
death.  Yes,  we  were,  in  confiding  simplicity,  ex- 
isting in  dreams  of  blissfulness.  Poor  visions! 
they  were  too  sweet  to  last.  All  those  sorrow- 
ful years  I  kept  this  robe,  jealously  treasured  if^— 
my  ill-fated  bridal  raiment — for  the  burial  shroud 
of  my  perished  hope. 

"Ah,  Lawrence!  the  memory  of  those  discon- 
solate days,  those  cheerless  nights,  waiting  for 
the  summons  to  come,  makes  my  heart  sick.  I 
sank  to  the  borders  of  the  tomb.  For  months 
my  life  was  considered  the  prey  of  Death ;  for 
forty  hours  all  indications  of  its  lamp  were  ex- 
tinct. I  was  reported  gone  to  the  land  of  '  the 
Hereafter.'  To  you  this  solemn  news  was 
wafted.  When,  at  last,  I  rallied  and  vanquished 
the  destroying  enemy,  it  was  many  weeks  before 


322 


MYSTIC  EOBklANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GKET. 


I  became  rational.  There  were  no  lucid  inter\als 
ill  my  delirium.  My  attendants  believed  I  must 
die.  It  Avas  deemed  best  to  leave  you  thinking 
my  sorrows  were  at  an  end.  When  I  did  return 
to  conscious  responsibility,  I  realized  that  you  had 
already  suffered  the  pangs  of  bereavement — if 
aught  on  earth  could  add  to  your  agony — and 
were  wedded  to  the  loneliness  of  a  hopeless  melan- 
claoly.  I  was  satisfied  my  days  were  yet  few  and 
numbered.  I  esteemed  it  cruel  to  tell  you  I 
lived,  when,  in  a  little  while,  you  must  again  hear 
the  story  of  my  long  r(>pose  in  the  solitude  of  the 
grave.  I  insisted  that  it  would  lie  merciful  to 
leave  you  under  the  impression  that  I  was  no 
more.  After  I  was  able  to  rise  from  my  bed,  I 
still  considered  it  better  to  leave  the  subject,  as 
to  you,  undisturbed.    I  did  not  expect  to  live  long. 

"As  the  years  plodded  on  in  their  slow  and 
monotonous  track,  I  gained  strength,  and  ex- 
perienced a  perceptible  emotion  of  hope  that  we 
might  meet  again.  This  stimulated  my  desire 
for  life.  Eapidly  I  recuperated.  My  eager  con- 
sent was  granted  that  you  should  know  the  truth 
and  see  me  the  first  day  circumstances  admitted. 

"Butch,  Lawrence,  cruel  Fate!  As  the  days 
passed,  after  this  anticipated  reality  might  have 
been,  to  multiply  weeks  and  months  and  years, 
that  '  hope  deferred '  which  '  maketh  the  heart 
sick,'  Avas  mine  with  a  pitiless  vengeance.  I 
could  never  forgive  myself  that  I  had  not  earlier 
apprised  you  that  I  was  not  dead.  I  concluded 
that  you  had  gone  to  some  secluded  spot  to  hide 
away  from  the  eyes  of  the  world;  and  that  I  was 
doomed  to  pass,  at  last,  from  my  gloomy  retire- 
ment to  the  silent  loneliness  of  the  grave.  The 
bridal  dress  was  again  returned  to  its  recess  of 
guarded  treasures,  to  aAvait  that  solemn  ceremony; 
and  I  grew  resigned  to  the  inevitable. 

"  At  length,  hoAvever,  after  hope  was  only  a 
vanished  dream,  Mrs.  Flowers,  the  good  angel, 
came  to  tell  me  that  she  had  pressed  your  hand 
and  looked  into  your  honest  eyes.  This  was  not 
until  uftcr  you  had  departed  for  the  South,  and 
she  Avas  on  1  he  eve  of  starting  to  join  you.  She  im- 
portuned mo  to  aid  her  in  developing  a  thrilling 
surprise.  She  desired  to  prove  your  constancy. 
Urgently  she  implored  me  to  come  forth  from  the 
convent  and  remain  Avith  my  friends,  very  quietly, 


untd  time  to  arrive  here  for  this  gladsome  season 
and  its  precious  compliments — thrice  blessed  to 
us.  From  that  day  it  has  all  been  her  affair. 
To-night  its  sequel  unfolded  before  your  open 
eyes.  I  knoAv  your  .sad  story — never  mention 
it  again  in  tli<'  futuiv. 

"This  night,  se\'en teen  years  ago,  I  expected 
to  1)0  Avith  yon,  attired  as  I  am  now.  How  long 
since  then!  But  the  infallible  doctrine  that 
patient  virtue  and  unyielding  honor  Avill  ulti- 
mately receive  their  meritorious  reward,  those 
heavily  journeying  years  have  abundantly  demon- 
strated to  us,  tedious  as  they  have  been,  and  hope- 
less as  they  have  seemed.  I  thought  it  Avell  that 
you  should  thus  see  me,  the  first  time  after  our 
mournful  severance,  as  I  should  have  then  ap- 
peared, save  alone  these  deep  and  defacing  im- 
prints of  care,  time  and  sorroAv.  I  am  delighted 
to  see  that  these  wasting  agents  of  youth  and 
life  have  dealt  no  more  severely  with  you." 

Lawrence:  "My  poor,  long-suffering  darling, 
you  are  as  young  and  fair  to  me  as  then,  and 
thrice  precious  for  the  fidelity  cherished  for  silent 
absence,  amounting  to  seeming  neglect.  Hoav 
thankful  I  am  for  this  reserved  surprise  and  the 
opportunity  it  has  afforded  me  to  prove  my  con- 
stancy. I  thought  Mrs.  Flowers  Avas  in  serious 
earnest  about  her  social  plans." 

Effie:  "No,  she  Avas  not.  But  her  faith  in 
the  fidelity  of  mankind  in  general  Avas  less  than 
mine  in  you  individually.  Siie  would  haA'O  dis- 
couraged you  on  the  first  symptom  of  a  dispo- 
sition on  your  part  to  yield  to  the  fascmating 
temptation  with  Avhich  you  were  tried.  I  Avas 
constantly  and  fully  adAnsed  all  the  time.  I  should 
not  have  blamed  you  had  you  surrendered;  but  I 
appreciate  you  all  the  more  that  you  Avere  faitli- 
ful  to  my  memory." 

Lawrence  :  "  We  are  agreed  on  all  these  points. 
Now  you  wear  the  blessed  robe,  and  the  sacred 
season  is  here  again.  At  last,  after  the  long 
and  relentless  interdiction  of  time,  I  impl(5re  you. 
my  resurrected  darling,  let  us  never  permit  time 
to  have  the  latitude  to  play  her  fickle  freaks,  un- 
til the  birth  of  another  day,  to  dissever  us.  Before 
the  morning  dawns  let  us  be  united  for  aye. 
Mrs.  FloAvci-s  said  something-  about  the  Christ- 
mas chimes  and  the  holy  man." 


EIGHTEEN  YEARS  AFTEE. 


323 


Effii::  "My  plighted  vows  weio  yours  m  the 
bright  days  of  yore;  they  have  been  constantly 
yours  in  the  darkest  days  of  my  bitter  affliction; 
they  remain  none  the  less  yours  to  night.  I  have 
ever  been  as  ready  to  seal  and  con.'^eerate  thcin  on 
the  holy  altar  of  pure  love  as  I  am  now.  Mrs. 
Flowers  has  all  that  arranged.  When  the  bells 
toll  midnight,  she  will  come  upon  the  stage  with 
her  supporting  train — the  unrivaled  star  in  the 
scene.  In  that  solemn  hour,  amid  these  sacred 
associations,  here  beneath  the  genial  skies  of  this 
benignant  clime,  I  shall  reward  your  constant 
devotion  with  tiie  treasured  love  of  a  heart  which 
has  ever  thrilled  with  the  reveberating  emotions 
of  the  pulsating  notes,  unceasingly  chanted,'  Truly 
thine ! ' " 

Lawrence  :  "  I  wonder  if  there  will  be  many 
present,  beside  our  mutual  friends." 

Effie  :  "  All  of  the  reigning  belles,  and  some  of 
their  admiring  gallants,  in  the  social  circles  where 
you  are  known,  are  to  come.  But  to  them  the 
affair  is  a  profound  mystery.  They  will  meet  a 
surprise  as  startling,  comparatively,  as  that  which 
paratyzed  you  with  sudden  amazement.  Mrs. 
Flowers  has  her  plot  highly  Avrought.  She  de- 
sires the  scene  to  be  clothed  with  a  halo  of  pleas- 
ing sensation.  Her  very  being  is  enveloped  in 
the  .quintessence  of  passionate  and  creative  na- 
tural romance  in  real  life.  Under  its  magic  spell 
has  she  lived  and  moved  all  her  days.  She  is 
one  of  Grod's  noblest  works,  and  none  the  less 
'  The  Angel  of  Consolation  '  to-night,  than  when 
she  was  the  guardian  spirit  of  the  children  of 
the  mountain  forest.  Our  cause  is  her  special 
charge — our  happiness  her  zealous  solicitude. 

"You  are  a  full  partner  Avith  your  late  confid- 
ing employers  and  much  appreciative  friends. 
This  lovely  mansion  is  ours  exclusively.  Here  are 
we  to  dwell.  Such  is  my  wish.  I  desire  never  to  be 
nearer  the  scenes  of  our  sorrows  and  suffering." 

Lawrence  :  "  God  bless  her !  To  her  more  than 
to  all  our  other  friends  combined,  are  we  indebted 
for  this  blessed  occasion  and  our  promising  future." 
Effie  :  "  That  is  true.  She  knows  how  to 
pity  us.  It  would  move  a  heart  of  stone  to  hear 
her  pathetic  recitals  of  her  own  bitter  experience 
and  silent  suffering,  as  she  sometimes  confidingly 
recounted  them  to  me." 


Lawrence:  "It  is  both  wonderful  and  mys- 
terious— the  devoted  and  unselfish  interest  she  has 
taken  in  f)ur  behalf,  and  more  especially  mine.  I 
am  unable  to  understand  what  so  powerfully  in- 
fluenced her  in  our  favor.  I  can  attribute  it  to 
noching  but  charitable  sympathy  and  immeasur- 
able philanthrophy,  that  superinduce  such  bound- 
less compassion  for  distressed,  aftlicted,  suffering 
humanity." 

Effie  :  "  That  is  the  cause  in  the  main,  on 
general  principles,  perhaps  sufficient  to  have 
prompted  her  to  do  all  she  has  done  for  us. 
But,  ah,  Lawrence  I  there  has  been,  and  is,  a 
more  powerful  incentive  that  has  actuated  and 
still  controls  her  impulsive  nature :  it  is  a  cher- 
ished phantom  of  the  past — the  hallowed  memory- 
of  associations,  as  these  were  when,  and  soon 
after,  your  name  first  became  with  them  blended. 
Oh,  Lawrence!  it  is  the  spell  of  that  influence — 
that  nothing  can  ever  subdue  until  Carrie  Flow- 
ers passes  beneath  the  sods  of  the  grave — that 
makes  her  interest  in  us  as  lasting  as  life  itself. 
She  has  been  requested  to  make  our  Aveal  her 
own,  by  one  Avhose  slightest  intimation  is,  with 
her,  an  imperative  injunction  she  would  no  more 
disregard  than  she  would  break  the  most  sacred 
commandment.  Lawrence,  it  is  gratitude — that 
divinest  of  all  mortal  influences  and  attributes,  so 
rarelj"  found  in  its  sublime  perfection  in  this  non- 
appreciative  world — that  prompts  Carrie  Flowers 
to  be  to  us  a  ministering  comf ortress ;  gratitude 
to  one  whom  she  mournfully  realizes  is  lost  to 
her  for  evermore." 

The  great  clock  in  the  library  strikes  the  first 
knell  .of  midnight.  Instantaneousl}' a  thousand 
bolls  chime  in  discordant  chorus,  and  send  their 
1  startling  echoes  floating  away,  in  mingling  rever- 
berations, on  the  soft  and  balmy  air — such  odorif- 
erous zephyrs  as  can  be  found  on  Christmas-eve 
noAvhere  else  on  earth,  save  alone  under  the 
dreamy  skies  of -some  fair  and  sunny  land,  such 
as  this  is  where  the  re-union  of  Lawrence  and 
Effie  is  consummated.  It  is  the  greeting  of  a 
Southern  metropolis  to  the  festive  season — the 
chant  of  peace  and  good  will 

But,  ah !  to  those  loving  hearts,  what  a  thrill 
of  ecstasy  the  gladsome  tocsins  send!  What 
a  greeting   they   usher  in   unto   Lawrence   and 


324 


^lYSTIG  ROMANCES  OF  THE  BLUE  AND  THE  GREY. 


Effie!  A  charming  procession  of  the  gayest  of 
the  gay  and  the  fairest  of  the  fair-,  beside  adoring 
admirers,  file  into  the  main  parlor.  "  The  beauty 
and  the  chivahy "  of  this  "Southern  Queen" 
are  assembled  now.  To  Lawrence,  there  is  no 
stranger  in  this  merry  throng.  But  amazement 
is  clearly  depicted  on  each  face  when  the  lovely 
woman  by  his  side  is  observed. 

Gracefully  Mrs.  Flowers  presides  over  the  cere- 
mony of  introduction.  She  is  beaming  with  the 
satisfaction  of  delight — with  the  anticipation  of 
the  crowning  triumph  of  her  cherished  surprise. 
Lawrence  is  greeted  without  reserve,  and  with 
manifest  and  undisguised  admiration. 

If  the  presence  of  Effie  created  surprise,  the 
approach  of  an" eminent  divine,  in  his  sacredotal 
robes,  provokes  wonderment  that  no  words  can 
describe.  The  introduction  of  the  "man  of  God" 
to  Etiie,  and  his  greeting  to  the  other  members 
of  the  company  over,  Mrs.  Flowers  steps  a  few 
paces  from  the  group,  turns,  faces  her  guests  and 
friends,  and  bows.  Silence  reigns  supreme  in 
the  appartments.  Breathless  suspense  pervades 
her  audience.  Some  mysterious  scene  is  about 
to  develop.  All  reaUze  that  such  is  true.  Mrs. 
Flowers  says: 

"  My  Good  Friexds  :  I  have  called  you  here 
after  much  coaxing  importunity,  to  witness  an 
occasion  replete  Avith  fascinating  surprise.  Had  I 
sooner  intimated  its  nature  there  Avould  have 
been  no  necessity  to  entreat  you  to  come;  but 
then  the  pleasure  of  this  moment  would  not  be 
mine:  that  of  beholding  you  on  the  tip-toe  of 
expectation.  Before  you  now,  my  friends,  is  un- 
folding the  final  scene  in  a  drama  of  baffled  love 
that  has  crept  on  its  slow  and  mournful  course 
through  the  Avinding  vicissitudes  of  almost  eigh- 
teen years.  For  nearly  seventeen  years  your 
friend  here  has  grieved  for  his  fair  companion 
as  one  who  stands  by  the  bier  of  a  departed 
loved  one.  For  years  she  has  borne  in  her 
heart  that  sorrow  known  to  those  only,  to  whom 
the  certainty  comes,  that  the  dearest  object  of 
earth  is  lost  forever.      To-night  they  met  for  the 


first  time  in  all  those  sad  and  suffering  years.  To- 
night yon  are  to  see  the  realization  of  the  roman- 
cer's dream,  in  actual  life.  Immediately  now, 
before  your  open  eyes,  here,  in  this  Paradise  of 
Love,  3'ou  are  to  see  them  married. 

"My  fan-  friends,  don't  be  envious.  You 
have  had  every  opportunity  to  estrange  his  finger- 
ing affection  from  the  memory  of,  to  him,  the 
dead.  You  failed.  He  is  her  rewarding  treas- 
ure ;  she  is  his  consecrated  jewel.  Behold  two 
admirable  marvels  of  devotion!  Bestow  upon 
them  your  smiles.  Vouchsafe  them  your  bless- 
ing.    They  are  Avorthy." 

She  then  names  the  conventional  and  assisting 
couples,  as  attendants  in  the  sacred  ceremony, 
and  invites  the  minister  to  proceed  with  its 
solemnization. 

The  ceremony  is  that  of  the  Episcopal  Church. 
This  completed,  the  A'enerable  man  says  : 

"My  Children:  I  know  the  pathetic  story  of 
your  sorrows  and  your  sufiering.  These  you  en- 
dured Avith  patient  fortitude  and  virtuous  resig- 
nation. In  this  pleasing  moment  you  realize 
your  Avell  earned  rcAvard.  It  gladdens  my  heart 
to  bestow  upon  you  Christ's  blessing. 

"  Now,  in  this  beautiful  land  and  deficious  chme 
— the  home  of  love — from  this,  your  sylvan  boAver 
of  enchantment,  you  may  glance  back  over,  the 
sterile  Avaste  left  behind  you,  and  complacently 
smile,  AA'hile  the  magic  of  true  loA'e  reA^ivifies 
your  long  blighted  hopes,  heals  your  once  broken 
hearts,  and  envelopes  you  in  a  halo  of  sii])reme 
happiness."' 

"  My  task  Is  done,  my  song  hath  ceased,  my  theme 

Has  died  into  an  echo ;  it  Is  fit 
The  spell  should  hreak  of  this  protracted  dream ; 

The  torch  shall  be  extinguished  Avhich  hath  lit 
My  midnight  lamp,  and  Avhat  is  -wxit  is  Avrit ; 

Would  that  it  was  worthier;  but  I  am  not  now 
That  which  I  have  been,  and  my  visions  flit 

Less  palpably  before  me ;  and  tlie  glow 
Which  in  my  spirit  dwelt,  is  fluttering  faint  and  low. 

"  Mine  be  the  pain. 

If  such  there  was ;  yours  the  moral  of  this  strain. 
*  *  *  * 

"  Farewell !  a  word  that  must  he,  and  hath  been ; 

A  sound  which  makes  us  linger;  yet— Fauewell! 


RARE  BOOK 
COLLECTION 


THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINA 

AT 

CHAPEL  HILL 

Wilmer 

146 


?i®a 


wHfl 


